Amina Figarova - Piano (Jazz Workshop Instructor)
Following her emergence in the mid-'90s, Figarova has performed internationally with a home base in New York. She has earned critical praise for albums like 2005's Come Escape with Me, 2015's Blue Whisper, and 2019's Road to the Sun.
Classically trained, her parents were also jazz aficionados and introduced her to albums by Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Oscar Peterson, and Ella Fitzgerald. Following her initial studies as the Baku Conservatory in her homeland of Azerbaijan, Figarova moved to the Rotterdam Conservatory in the Netherlands and eventually to the Berklee College of Music in Boston, where she further honed her jazz technique.
As a leader, she has worked with artists such as Wayne Escoffery, Rez Abbasi, Alex Pope Norris, and Rudy Royston, while away from her own work she has performed with jazz royalty, including James Moody, Larry Coryell, Winard Harper, and Toots Thielemans
She has released 13 albums, becoming one of DownBeat's Rising Star Composers during the past decade
