Gochag Askarov

Gochag Askarov (b.1978) is one of handful Azerbaijani mugham artists, such as the great master Alim Qasimov, to have established an international career, introducing to audiences around the world this great and unique art form. “An extraordinary voice”, “a fantastic singer”, “crown prince of Azerbaijani classical mugham” – this is how the world`s musical press and media portrays Gochag Askarov.

His voice of almost three-octave range is capable of conveying drama, passion, or moving the listener by melancholy, or captivating by bright virtuosity.  Gochag Askarov comes from Karabakh, a fabulous mountain area of Azerbaijan, which is famous for its musicians and, especially, for good singers.  A gift of beautiful voice has been generously distributed among the members of his family but he was the only one of them who chose the career of singer.  In 1993 with Armenian occupation of Karabakh his family, along with hundreds of other Azerbaijani families, was forced to leave their native lands under the threat of death.  

For a few years the family was wandering from one town to another until settled in Baku. In 1998 he entered the Baku Music College, and was accepted to the class of Mugham vocals. From 2004 to 2008 he studied theory and history of music and traditional vocals at the National Conservatoire in Baku, and graduated it with bachelor degree.

His international career started in 2007 with his solo concert on the stage of the Brunei Gallery Theatre in London; the same year he was featured in the BBC Radio 3 “World Routes” program hosted by Lucy Duran, then performed at the US universities of Wisconsin, Montana, and California (UCLA). In 2008 UK label ARC Music Productions Ltd released his first CD album “Music from Azerbaijan. Gochag Askarov & Sari Gelin Ensemble”.

In 2009 he was invited to perform at WOMAD festival in the Charlton Park in London. The “London Evening Standard” in its review called Gochaq Askarov “one of new discoveries of WOMAD”, and in the booklet of the festival he was introduced this way: “Over the past 27 years of WOMAD, we`ve encountered plenty of truly astonishing singers. Add one more to this list”.

Since 2009 he has performed at the most important world music festivals and music stages around the world – WOMADadelaide (Australia), Taranaki (New Zealand), WOMEX (Thessaloniki, Greece), SXSW (Austin, USA), Proms-56 (London), “Casa Asia Festival” (Barcelona, Spain), Musica dei Popoli" (Florence, Italy), “Festival of old music” (Brighton, UK), “OUD” festival (Jerusalem, Israel), Shanghai World Music Festival (China), and “Five continents” festival (Switzerland). He has sung on the stages of UNESCO Headquarter in Paris, Royal Albert Hall and Southbank Centre in London, at Tropentheater (Amsterdam, the Netherlands), at BBC Theatre (London), has toured with concerts to the USA, UK, Italy, France, Morocco, Lebanon, Abu-Dhabi, China, and to many other countries. A few foreign media, such as BBC Radio 3, BBC TV-4, Al-Jazeera, Italian Radio-3, and Australian National Radio featured him in their programs. His CD albums released in the UK, Australia, and Italy can be listened on iTune, Spotify, Amazon, Deezer, Tidal, and YouTube. His latest CD albums released by the Italian Felmay Records label in 2011, 2013, and 2017 received excellent write-ups from Songline, The Wire (UK), Trad, Les Inrocks, Musique du Monde, Telerama, La Vie (France), Folk World/ Deutsche Rezensionen, All About Jazz (Italy), and many other renowned Western music magazines and online resources.

About the Performance at TOTEM

Gochag Askarov is accompanied by such first-rate musicians as amazing kamancha performer Elnur Mikalov, wonderful Rafail Askarov on balaban, brilliant percussionists Kamran Karimov and Yusif Azizov respectively on naghara and bass-naghara, and the youngest member of the band, Ibrahim Babayev on tar.  A talented jazz pianist Vasif Huseynzade joins to the band for two first pieces. The program of the concert includes five compositions.

The first composition is called “All Stars”; the idea of this piece is to alternate tutti of the ensemble with solo of its each member who is free to improvise his part. The author of this piece is Elnur Mikayilov.The second piece is a very popular Azerbaijani folk song “Sary gelin” (A Blonde), arranged in a contemporary musical style.The third piece is a composition in the traditional mode Shour; it consists of metrical song and non-metrical mugham melody.The fourth piece sounds in the traditional mode Bayaty Shiraz; it starts with a folk song and ends with another song, and between these two songs Gochag performs a beautiful melancholic mugham Bayaty Shiraz.The fifth piece, composition in the traditional mode Shushtar, like previous ones, combines metrical songs with non-metrical mugham melody.