Ted Panken (DownBeat, Jazz Times):

Tenor saxophone virtuoso Azat Bayazitov proudly announces the December 2023 release of "EXPECTATIONS", his third album, which documents his increasingly personal musical vision as an instrumentalist, composer and musical storyteller.

Recorded midway through 2022 in Basel, Switzerland, the melody-rich program contains nine harmonically vivid originals that stimulate the leader’s expansive creativity, which he projects with earthiness and high intellect, projecting authoritative chops and a beautiful tone. Joining Bayazitov is a talented international ensemble associated with Jazzcampus Basel – a jazz quintet with high-level Swiss guitarist and recording artist Silvan Joray (now living in New York), evocative Siberian pianist Julia Perminova, stalwart Venezuelan bassist Roberto Koch, and dynamic Latvian drummer Janis Jaunalksnis, augmented on three selections by a woodwind trio and string quartet that render the rich colors and rhythmic subtleties of Bayazitov’s scores.

"Expectations" follows Bayazitov’s well-received 2019 recording "The Doors Are Open", for which he convened a New York A-list group including guitarist Adam Rogers, pianist David Kikoski, and bassist Boris Kozlov. That album came five years after "If You Still Trust", recorded during his 2014-2017 tenure with Russian impresario Igor Butman’s world-class Moscow Jazz Orchestra. Then Bayazitov relocated to New York City, where he thrived until March 2020, when the onset of Covid-19 made it impossible to work, compelling him to start driving for Uber Eats to pay the rent.

Fortuitously, Bayazitov had applied to Jazzcampus just before Covid struck, and that September he moved to Basel to pursue a Master’s degree. Already a world-class tenor saxophone practitioner, Bayazitov focused on expanding his instrumental arsenal and on intensive composition studies with faculty member Guillermo Klein, the eminent composer-arranger, who spurred Bayazitov to write music for string quartet and some big band projects. All but one of the songs contained herein stem from their interaction.

Born in Kazan in Russia’s Tatarstan province, Bayazitov had violin lessons at 6, but wasn’t inspired by music until age 14, when he heard jazz and started to play the saxophone. He moved to Moscow in 2007 to matriculate at Gnessin Academy of Music where he studied with eminent saxophone teacher Alexander Oseichuk, and became part of Moscow’s then-thriving jazz scene. In 2010, he began to write music and perform with his band at clubs and jazz festivals; in 2013, he spent six months as artistic director of the Kazan Philharmonic Big Band, for which he wrote his earliest arrangements, and organized programs with drummer Mark Whitfield, Jr. (who plays on his debut record along with pianist Davis Whitfield) and Seamus Blake.

In considering pathways by which to navigate that jazz combo plus woodwind/strings instrumentation, Bayazitov paid close attention to Blake’s superb album Superconductor, with soloists John Scofield and Gonzalo Rubalcaba, for which Klein contributed several arrangements. He also cites as influences Chris Potter’s self-arranged A Song for Anyone and Michael Brecker’s Wide Angles, arranged by Gil Goldstein.

“Each album influenced me mainly on my decisions in working with the forms and melodic shapes, how these masters used orchestration tools, blending different instruments, etc.,” he says. “But the sound always was first for me – how they achieved that emotional attraction for the listeners.”

Imperatives of soulfulness and beauty infuse the opening dialogue between sax and strings on the title track, “Expectations,” for which Bayazitov creates variations on a one-bar motif that “gives a sense of looking at something magic and beautiful coming down slowly from the sky to the ground” as the strings play tremolo and descend to the middle register. Spaniard Fernando Brox offers a mercurial flute improvisation, setting up Bayazitov’s heroic solo. Explicating the title, Bayazitov points to the image on the CD cover depicting a narrow lane that intersects with a larger road.

“You have some expectations, but you don’t really know what’s there,” he says. “My expectations were low when I got to Basel, a small Swiss town without much activity. But I had a really good time, compared to what I would have been doing in New York, studying music and recording an album.”

Melody is the watchword on “Very New York,” an affirmative, medium-slow ballad with meaty changes and a straight-eighth feel. Bayazitov opens with a lovely exposition of the melody; after Koch and Joray respond in kind, he concludes with an efflorescent solo. The title emanates from Klein’s comment, “You have that New York thing; this is very New York,” to which Bayazitov adds, “When I close my eyes and play this or listen to it, I see New York.”

Say “Be Loose” fast, and you’ll get Bayazitov’s word game in titling this “weird” 24-bar blues with pentatonic implications. After an opening cadenza that mirrors heroes like Potter and Brecker, his cogent, powerful solo proceeds over a rhythmically shifting flow that transitions from funky to swinging. Joray seamlessly picks up the baton for a few kinetic choruses.

At the opening of “Maybe Later,” Bayazitov states the evocative melody, supported by the strings, which render the keening backdrop with flow, elegance and grace. Then he continues the ballad with the rhythm section, developing a long solo that showcases his command of the tenor’s upper register.

“Stretching Out” opens with a theme statement by Bayazitov with bass and drums. A probing bass solo follows, setting up the leader for rubato ruminations that evoke, he says, “a similar mood to what John Coltrane was doing with Elvin Jones,” before returning to terra firma. During the final section, Perminova displays her crystalline touch on an efflorescent piano solo.

“I wanted to make the bassline friends with the melody,” Bayazitov says of “Make Them Friends,” a two-section piece incorporating both the woodwinds and strings that proceeds to Koch’s staunch, authoritatively executed bassline. The brisk opening section features Swiss veteran Domenic Landolf’s well-wrought bass clarinet solo. When the tempo slows, the leader’s soprano sax passage introduces a strings interlude that he subsequently draws upon while crafting a reflective, inexorably building tenor solo.

Bayazitov projects his gorgeous upper register tenor tone on the refrain of and initial improvisation upon “Arina,” a lovely bossa-bolero with a light, transparent feel that he conjured just after meeting his wife. Halfway through the first section, he doubles his line with overdubbed tenor saxophone. Joray’s guitar solo proceeds over a background and soli by the woodwinds, before Bayazitov takes over with just the woodwinds backing – Landolf plays the bassline on bass clarinet – to begin a heartfelt, reverential tenor saxophone solo.

The bass and drums lay out on “A Step Further,” a swinging straight-ahead tune on which the leader introduces his pellucid alto saxophone with accompaniment by Joray and Perminova, who each contribute brief solos. “When I moved from New York, where I’d been living and gigging for three-and-a-half years, my decision sometimes seemed like a ‘step back’ to me,” Bayazitov says, explaining the title. “But it was always my dream to get this kind of schooling, and within a few months of starting my studies at Jazzcampus, I completely got it – it was ‘a step further’ for my musical life.”

This accomplished album concludes on a lighter note with “Talk to People,” on which, propelled by Koch’s sinuous plugged-in bassline, Bayazitov traverses the deceptively simple, memorable melody like a good soul singer. “It’s like a pop tune, but in the sense of a jazz player,” he suggests. “If you give it to some pop players, it would be complicated.”

Bayazitov will return to New York at the beginning of 2024, where he’ll apply lessons learned at Jazzcampus. He has high expectations for the next phase of his career. “I need that feeling of being pushed that you get in New York, where you’re always encountering musicians who play better than you and you have to pull yourself up to reach their level,” he says. With Expectations, Bayazitov establishes himself as one of the players who will inspire New York’s younger jazz aspirants to pull themselves up to his level.