Azat Bayazitov - Expectations (2023) Hi Res

Three years separated the release of the albums The Doors Are Open and Expectations by saxophonist from Kazan Azat Bayazitov. During this time, many events occurred, including in the personal biography of the musician. The main thing, apparently, is the relocation from New York, where The Doors Are Open was recorded, to Europe, or more precisely, to the Swiss city of Basel. It was there that in the summer of 2022 Azat recorded a new album, which he independently published this year. I think that Azat also found the characteristic Western European cityscape featured on the cover of Expectations in Basel. In any case, as he writes on the album cover, most of the nine compositions that make up the Expectations program were composed in this city, which is called the cultural capital of Switzerland.

If The Doors Are Open was a rather intimate project in terms of the format of the participants, this time Bayazitov assembled a large international team of musicians, in which it was pleasant to see the names of Swiss guitarist Sylvain Jaurey and Russian pianist Yulia Perminova, already familiar to our site. In addition to the main quintet of musicians, the recording included a classical string quartet, clarinettists and a flutist. True, there is not a single track in the program where all project participants would play together. Close to this is the opening (also the title) composition Expectations, where only Yulia is not present: a kind of parade alley, a performance by the musicians. Azat himself, again unlike The Doors Are Open, plays not only his “crown” tenor saxophone, but also two more varieties of the saxophone line: soprano and alto. Personally, I found his playing on the other two saxophones quite convincing.

Azat plays soprano in the lyrical composition Very New York, which I really liked, clearly inspired by, apparently, pleasant memories of the Big Apple - one of the best in the program, in my opinion. Here Azat conducts a very effective dialogue with Perminova’s piano, which also includes the double bass of Roberto Koch. And then follows the equally strong, but completely different mood and dynamics of the piece Be Loose with a bright and long tenor saxophone solo by Bayazitov at the start, excellent work by the rhythm group Koch-Jaunalksnis and an expressive guitar part from Zhorei. Of the three pieces featuring a string quartet, Maybe Later, where tenor saxophone and strings take center stage, seemed to me the least successful: for my taste, the overall sound was too sweet. In Stretching Out Zhorey and especially Perminova are again good, and in Make Them Friends the strings were in place, and Koch and the band leader showed their best side. Azat's viola sounded wonderful in the play A Step Further, and he finished the program again on tenor, again in dialogue with Perminova, with the composition Talk To People.

Expectations seemed to me varied, not letting the listener get bored, very strong in music and well thought out in its program, and Azat Bayazitov himself once again confirmed in my eyes the reputation of a very high-class saxophonist.