Alexandra Ivanova

Alexandra Ivanova – Beauty in Chaos – Jazz Thing Next Generation Vol. 99 (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 52:03 minutes | 527 MB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Double Moon Records

Alexandra Ivanova’s music is full of influences that are as diverse as the world we live in. In fact, the Austrian pianist with Bulgarian roots has already lived in Jordan, Lebanon, the United Arab Emirates and France, and has immersed herself in a wide variety of cultures. “I was a Scott Joplin fan and played my first ragtime pieces when I was 10,” the pianist recalled. “I remember how the ‘Maple Leaf Rag’ attracted me magnetically. ‘Cherokee’ was the first jazz standard I played. I founded my first trio at the local music school. I really immersed myself in the music of Oscar Peterson and Ahmad Jamal.” Despite studying Social Sciences at the prestigious Paris Institute of Political Studies, Ivanova was simultaneously drawn back to the piano. “Back then, I was interested in both Harold López-Nussa and Avishai Cohen,” the pianist recounted. “I also played my own compositions with my trio during my Master’s studies.” Globetrotter years followed the two parallel studies. “But the world does not revolve around Europe,” Ivanova said, “and that’s why I learned Arabic at that time and moved to Lebanon. After that, I lived in Jordan and in the Gulf. Those five years in the Middle East brought me closer to Muslim, Arab, Indian and Pakistani cultures, where the topic of Western privileges comes up in conversation. I got to know Tarek Yamani in Dubai, of whom I had been a big fan for a long time and who became my mentor. I put my career aside to have time to compose. After an artist residency in Iceland, I moved to Berlin during the pandemic.”

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Alexandra Ivanova – Sentiment (2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/88,2 kHz | Time – 01:22:06 minutes | 1,61 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Genuin

Listening to Alexandra Ivanova’s first recording with Genuin, we are able to experience the very essence of the harpsichord! The Russian pianist and harpsichordist presents herself in a juxtaposition of contemporary and early music that creates exciting reflections: the new seems familiar, while old seems excitingly new. Ivanova combines Couperin, Rameau, Duphly, and Royer with works by the Latvian composer Anita Mieze, born in 1980.

In the 17th and 18th centuries, the associations between feeling and reason not only occupied the minds of French philosophers but also of great musicians: this extraordinarily sonorous recording revolves around these poles of baroque music and how they are reflected in modernity.
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