Eldar Djangirov

Eldar Djangirov was born January 28, 1987, in Kyrgyzstan in the former Soviet Union. At age five, he began playing, note for note, the pieces his father Emil would play on the family piano. His mother, Tatiana, a teacher of music history at the Music College in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, began giving the young Eldar piano lessons. In the summer of 1996, the late Charles McWhorter, a jazz enthusiast from New York City, heard Eldar playing at the Novosibirsk Jazz Festival in Russia. McWhorter obtained a scholarship for the young pianist to attend the summer music camp at Michigan's Interlochen Center for the Arts for three years running (1998-2000).