Leonid Chizhik

Leonid Chizhik (also Leonid Arkadjewitsch Tschischik , Russian Леонид Аркадьевич Чижик ; born January 1, 1947 in Chișinău , Moldovan Socialist Soviet Republic ) is a jazz pianist and university professor from the former Soviet Union who lives in Germany .

biography

Chizhik, who comes from a Jewish family, attended the state music school in Kharkov from 1954 ; at the age of 15 he appeared in an entertainment band. From 1965 he studied composition , musicology and piano with Theodor Gutman at the Gnessin Institute in Moscow , where he trained as a concert pianist. In Moscow he got in touch with the jazz scene of the capital in the then leading jazz café Molodjoschnoje ("youth"), played in the trio of German Lukjanow and in Georgi Garanjan's Melodija Ensemble , but his main occupation was in the state variety orchestra. After initially only performing as a classical soloist, after a debut album with Melodija from 1974 onwards, he was also given the opportunity to play jazz in public . After founding his own trio, he soon enjoyed “popularity [as] a grand master of the concert jazz piano”. He was named " Honored Artist of the USSR " in 1983, and he had a regular show on state television. Only in the mid-1980s did he appear as a soloist outside of the Soviet Union . a. in Tokyo, Brazil, Paris, Berlin and at the piano summer in Munich , where he lived from 1991.

From 1992 he worked as a lecturer at the Richard Strauss Conservatory in Munich , from 1994 as a professor at the Weimar University of Music and, since 2004, at the Munich University of Music . From the 1990s, projects in the field of jazz and classical music followed. a. with Gidon Kremer and Leszek Zadlo . He is also a member of the board of the International Jazz Federation and general director of the Moscow Art Center .

S. Frederick Starr describes Chizhik as "virtuoso [n] Pianist [s] of the frightening speed Art Tatum with the delicate stop Teddy Wilson Although he connects." Bebop - phrasing used "appears throughout the lyrical and romantic element in his Game through. ”For Starr he stands in the tradition of Alexander Tsfasman ; like him, he also recorded George Gershwin's music.

Discographic notes

• Reministesntsii (Reminiscences) ( Melodija , 1981)
• Jam Session Moscow (Fusion Records / Bellaphon, 1981) with Hans Kumpf
• In Concert (MFSL, 1986)
• Days Of Wine And Roses (Loft; 1987)
• Lockenhaus Collection: Opus Scherziando (Phillips, 1990)
• Les Pianos de la Nuit (La Roque d'Antheron) (DVD, Ideal Audience, 2002)
• Rag-Gidon-Time (Deutsche Grammophon, 2005)
• TRIBUTE - Leonid Chizhik and Friends (listen2this, 2007)

literature

• S. Frederick Starr: Red and Hot. Jazz in Russia 1917-1990 . Vienna, hannibal, 1990. ISBN 3-85445-062-1 .

Web links

• Web presence
• Portrait (2007) in the jazz newspaper
• Entry on Allmusic
• Portrait of Hans Kumpf in Jazzpages

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} Starr, p. 250 f.
2. ↑ Kumpf, jazz pages