By Matt Micucci
Fahir Atakoğlu’s latest CD Live at Umbria Jazz will be released on January 19 on the Far & Here label.
The album is a live recording of the concert in Umbria Jazz Festival, one of the most important jazz festivals in the world and has been held annually since 1973, usually in the month of July, in 2010 in Italy recorded in Teatro Morlacchi in Perugia.
It is the 17th album in Fahir’s vast catalogue of music. Fahir’s three previous U.S. jazz releases and his CDs have made it to #1 (three times) on the JazzWeek World Music Chart as well as charting high on the JazzWeek Jazz Chart.
Fahir Atakoğlu is a Turkish pianist and composer who has worked with a wide range of artists, such as Anthony Jackson and Mike Stern. He has worked to blend his own native music with sounds from the wider world, incorporating Cuban rhythms, Middle Eastern melodies, and improvisation as perfected by American jazz artists.
Live at Umbria Jazz is a high energy, dynamic trio recording of Fahir’s best works from albums like Istanbul In Blue, Faces & Places and IF. It features Fahir himself on piano, the great Cuban drummer Horacio “El Negro” Hernandez and renown Canadian bass player Alain Caron.
The announcement of the release of this album co-incides with the announcemens of plans for a 2016 Fahir Atakoğlu world tour underway.