Enver Izmaylov

About

Biography

Enver Izmaylov is a Crimean Tatar guitarist and composer who plays with a two-handed tapping technique and blends jazz with Crimean Tatar, Balkan and Eastern music. Winner of the 1995 European guitar competition in Lausanne and People's Artist of Ukraine (2009), he has recorded over thirty CDs. Izmaylov was born in 1955 in Fergana, Uzbekistan, into a Crimean Tatar family that had been deported from Crimea. He taught himself guitar from the age of fifteen, played in the jazz ensemble Sato under L. Atabekov and performed with it at festivals in Tashkent (1981) and Fergana (1984). In 1988 he moved to Crimea and taught music in Dzhankoi, and in 1990 he graduated from the Tashkent Institute of Culture. Since then he has performed mostly as a soloist. In the early 1980s Izmaylov developed his own version of tapping. Both hands work on the neck of the electric guitar, the fingers strike the strings at the frets like piano keys, and one player carries melody, bass and accompaniment. He draws his material from Crimean Tatar folklore, the music of the Balkans and the East, jazz and blues. The author of the liner notes to the album Minaret writes that Izmaylov uses no guitar effects, and that his instrument sounds like an Uzbek dutar or a Turkish oud. Audiences abroad first heard him in 1993 at the Vossa Jazz festival in Norway, according to the same liner notes. In 1995 Izmaylov won the Grand Prix at the first International Competition of European Guitarists in Lausanne and formed the trio Minaret with percussionist Rustem Bari and Narket Ramazanov. The Encyclopedia of Modern Ukraine names the saxophonist Igor Butman and the Bulgarian clarinetist Ivo Papazov among his duet partners. Since 2002 he has performed with his daughter, the singer L. Izmailova. The official website lists recordings from Efsane (1986) to River of Time (2008) and three albums from 2012. In 2025 Izmaylov joined a project with the American band The Klezmatics: he appears on their new album as composer and performer, and the band recorded the material live at The Falcon in Marlboro on June 15 and at DROM in New York on June 17. That summer he headlined the JetLAG festival, where he had also played in 2024. Izmaylov performs solo and with the ensemble Crimean Tatar Band. A solo evening is built around one electric guitar: a Kyiv programme in 2011 included songs by The Beatles and Indian and Eastern melodies. The audience can expect Crimean Tatar motifs and Balkan rhythms next to jazz improvisation.