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Aziza is an enchantress. Her music covers every tempo, her rhythms range from the simplest 4/4s to the most complex treasures of the music of her homeland, Azerbaijan. And yet not for a single moment does she release her hold on you or allow the mist to clear while she plays.

Here in Britain, she is only beginning to make her mark, with critically acclaimed performances at the Brecon Jazz Festival and in London’s Queen Elizabeth Hall. Nevertheless, her record company, Columbia, have great plans for her. I myself had great plans for a lunch with her in the exquisite atrium of the Landmark Hotel, where we were to meet. As luck would have it, the Central line collapsed, making me late.

Aziza comes from an exceptionally musical family. Her mother, who goes everywhere with her, was an outstanding folk singer before giving that up to manage her daughter. Her father is known as the architect of jazz in Azerbaijan. A mention of his name is enough for Aziza to hold forth: “He was a genius. A true genius.” Aziza does not hold opinions, she deals only in articles of faith. She tells a good story though. “When BB King came over to play in my country, he shared the same stage as my father. He heard my father playing the blues piano and said nobody could play the blues like him and BB King said to my father afterwards: ‘people call me the king of the blues, but if I could play the piano like you do, I would call myself God.’”

It is a commonplace to say that musicians, and indeed all artists in the former Soviet bloc, found themselves bound up in political games of which usually they wanted no part. Aziza still seems very bitter about the way the communist regime treated her father, she tells for instance stories of foreign trips being denied or of one case where her father had made it as far as the plane, only to be taken off at the last minute to make way for a well-connected prostitute. She herself hints at warmer relations with the successors to these regimes. Given to mysterious things like preconception, Aziza dreamt of the president being assassinated. She called him up upon waking and he took her warning seriously enough to try and avoid one of his public duties. Unfortunately for him, he was unable to change his schedule. He was then shot at but luckily remained unharmed.

Perhaps it is this uncommon self-assuredness that led to her last recording with a great many fusion greats assembled to play her compositions. Al Di Meola plays guitar, Bill Evans, sax. Stanley Clarke, no less, takes up the bass while Omar Hakim drums. An astonishing group of musicians to be playing on a 25 year old’s album. I asked if she had been intimidated by the company she had been keeping. “No. Not at all. In fact, I think I intimidated them a little. It took a lot of time to record and the music was very different. We had to stay up long hours and even then we recorded for the best part of a month.”

The album chrysalises much of what Aziza is about. The track ‘Father’ almost reduced the entire QEH to tears when she played it the night before the interview. His early death and her loss is apparent in much of what she does. She is also a dreamer, travelling to places far from her land of birth only to find some things are universal. She claims for instance, to know Spain but she has never been there. I asked if the Spanish themes and preoccupations of her album Dance of Fire were an indication of the musical directions she now wished to pursue. “I want to record with Paco de Lucia.” Paco being generally recognised as Flamenco’s greatest living exponent. She claimed to know him. Naively I inquired where they had met. “I have not met him but I know him.” How was that I wanted to know. I was not to be put off by excuses about it being a long story. “I think God tells me these things. I am never wrong about someone.” Never? Her eyes go a little blank and for the first time her confidence is momentarily dimmed, “Only once was I wrong.” I have not the heart to ask.