Presently, Aziza lives in Germany, Mainz area, and is accordingly better known in Europe than elsewhere. Her first album Character was described as her most intense one, but this may be due to her artistic development. (The title piece, still one of my favourites, may be taken as an example.) Whereas this one is virtually a piano solo album and pretty much aligned with local roots, later publications are more and more responsive to westerly style elements, including compositions like My Funny Valentine or Take Five or cooperation with musicians like Al di Meola, Bill Evans or Philip Catherine. To my opinion, photos tell the same story: while the first cover of Aziza Mustafa Zadeh appeared very conservative to me, nowadays there is a more modern image being worked at. Some people seem to regard this as a loss of artistic devotion, but having visited my first Aziza live concert last November, I cannot share this point of view. On the contrary, the auditory was donated a mighty, overwhelming experience which after many fantastic encores only ended when I suspected this fragile lady would collapse due to exhaustion after the next piece.
