The beginning
A Baku childhood
Vagif Mustafazadeh was born on 16 March 1940 in Baku. Music surrounded him from childhood: his mother, Zivyar khanum, was a pianist and became his first teacher. He sat at the piano early and studied the classical tradition.
But the decisive encounter of his youth was jazz. Hearing it, Vagif knew he had found the language he wanted to speak all his life.
Timeline
Ninety bars of a life
1940
On 16 March, Vagif Mustafazadeh is born in Baku. His pianist mother becomes his first teacher.
1950s
Music studies in Baku. The classical school lays the foundation of the future pianist.
1960s
Vagif discovers jazz, plays at jam sessions and forms his own ensembles. The search for his style begins.
1969
His trio performs at a jazz festival in Baku — one of the bright episodes of the city’s jazz scene.
1970s
Vagif shapes mugham-jazz, performs with ensembles and becomes known at jazz festivals across the Soviet Union.
1979
His composition wins first prize at the international jazz competition in Monaco — recognition of world stature.
16.12.1979
Vagif Mustafazadeh dies at 39 — suddenly, while on tour. He died as he lived — with music.
Baku, 1969At the piano
A musician to the last note
Contemporaries remembered Vagif as a man for whom music was not a profession but a way of breathing. He could improvise for hours, turning mugham intonations into jazz phrases.
This 1969 photograph kept him at the piano — where he was himself. Ten years later he would be gone, but this is how he is remembered.
“He lived a short life, but said what others could not have said in a hundred years.”jnews.az