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After 20 years at the helm of her acclaimed acoustic sextet, taking her across the globe and onto such renowned stages as the Newport Jazz Festival and New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, pianist Amina Figarova embarks on a bold new chapter with the release of Persistence. On the album, on her own AmFi Records imprint, the Azerbaijani-born pianist debuts her exploratory new ensemble Edition 113, an electric band grooving somewhere in the sweet spot between jazz fusion, classic R&B, inventive hip-hop and progressive funk.

Figarova couldn't have assembled a better band to enliven this thrilling new sound: supplementing her own piano with an array of keyboards, she's joined by guitar great Rez Abbasi (Rudresh Mahanthappa, Kiran Ahluwalia), bassist Yasushi Nakamura (Christian Sands, Toshiko Akiyoshi), drummer Rudy Royston (Bill Frisell, JD Allen) and her partner in music and life, flutist Bart Platteau, who here also wields the EWI (Electronic Wind Instrument). The album also features guest vocals by singer Paul Jost, rapper JSWISS, and poet/singer Skye's World.

Persistence is in one sense a single word autobiography for Figarova. She has forged a fiercely independent path in the music business, from her early aspirations growing up in the former Soviet Union, to pursuing her studies from her native Azerbaijan to Rotterdam and finally to Boston's Berklee College of Music. Wanting the scale and palette of a big band with the flexibility of a small group, she formed her sextet in 1998 and proceeded to craft an utterly unique body of music for the ensemble, which toured extensively for two decades before celebrating its 20th anniversary in 2018 with the release of Figarova's last album, Road to the Sun.

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Genre-splicing fusion is a tricky thing to get right. Strike the wrong balance between structure and sound, and you can end up with a pastiche that does a disservice to each component part. For pianist Amina Figarova, it's a risky move to produce an electronic-inflected, part hip-hop and funk-jazz fusion album after 20 years leading an acoustic ensemble.
Aptly titled, Persistence is a surprising delight and one that seemingly avoids many of the pitfalls of fusion. The opening title track launches into enthralling rhythmic interplay between drummer Rudy Royston and bassist Yasushi Nakamura, while flutist Bart Platteau channels the spirit of the Headhunters in his soaring melodies. Figarova, meanwhile, artfully comps, switching between piano and synthesizer. The record continues in this breathless vein, riffing off of Robert Glasper's hip-hop mentality for 'I've Got No Time,' while 'R Song' highlights Platteau and Figarova's almost telepathic interweaving with guitarist Rez Abbasi.
Even on slower numbers--'Morning Blue' and 'Horizons'--Figarova and her band manage to create a convincing sonic collage of acoustic and electric sounds: jazz swing and hip-hop swag, and a rollicking funk bottom end. Figarova does trip up on the somewhat gratuitous inclusion of rapper JSWISS for 'I've Got No Time.' But Paul Jost's open vocalizations, mirroring Platteau's melody on 'Horizons,' are genius.
Ultimately, Persistence stands as a worthy template for a wholly open approach to jazz that's generous enough for the inclusion of myriad influences.

     —Ammar Kalia, DownBeat Magazine May 2020

Pianist and composer Amina Figarova is back with a new approach-leading an electric ensemble she's dubbed Edition 113. The group is smaller than it sounds on record, a quintet that features guitarist Rez Abbasi, flutist Bart Platteau, bassist Yasushi Naka

     —Rick Anderson, CD HotList March 2020