Aziza Mustafa Zadeh

Aziza visited Azerbaijan in June 2007 for the Baku Jazz Festival, starring in her own concert at the Azerbaijan State Academic Opera and Ballet Theater and headlining the end-of-festival concert at the open-air Green Theater.

Aziza released her debut album, Aziza Mustafa Zadeh, in 1991. The album showed influence of Chick Corea and Keith Jarrett, as well as Near Eastern music. Her second album, Always, won her the Phono Academy Prize, a prestigious German music award, and the Echo Prize from Sony. She has since performed in many countries with many jazz and traditional luminaries and released several more albums, the most recent being Contrasts II, released in 2007.

In 1988, at the age of 18, Aziza's mugam-influenced style helped her win third place together with American Matt Cooper in the Thelonious Monk piano competition in Washington, D.C.. It was around this time that she moved to Germany with her mother.

On December 16, 1979, Aziza's father died of a severe heart attack in Tashkent at the age of 39. In order to help her daughter cope with this blow, Aziza's mother gave up her career as a singer to help nurture her daughter's own musical talents.

Aziza Mustafa Zadeh (Azerbaijani: Əzizə Mustafazadə; born December 19, 1969) is an Azerbaijani singer, pianist, and composer who plays a fusion of jazz and mugam (a traditional improvisational style of Azerbaijan) with classical and avant-garde influences.