This is a CD to place on the shelf next to Miles Davis’ Sketches of Spain. Trumpeter Emil Bizga plays with lyricism, imagination, intelligence, and yes soul, in a program ranging from Gershwin to Jobin, the Irish folk song “Danny Boy” (outstanding) to music by Romanian composer Ciprian Porumbescu. 
Romanian born Emil Bizga is sure to become one of the major performers on today’s jazz scene with a very personal style that combines a full knowledge of jazz’s past with a keen awareness of jazz’s present. 
Jack Kleisinger – “Highlights in Jazz” NY “Acacia Flower” was born out of my desire to intertwine my favorite melodies with jazz, the international musical language. The arrangements in this album interlace jazz with the sensitive textures of Romanian composer Ciprian Porumbescu, the dynamic sounds of American composer George Gershwin, the jazzy Brazilian rhythms of Bossa Nova composer A.C. Jobim, and the romanticism of Italian film composer Nino Rota. In this album, the sounds of different places and times complement one another, each speaking to us in its own unique musical language, pulling us back to our roots. The song that gave birth to the title of the album, “Acacia Flower”, is a Romanian romance from the interwar period that I interpolated with rumba rhythms. Romanian composer Porumbescu’s music is poetic and nostalgic, a mixture of ‘doina’ and dance, with serene and melancholy undertones. I transformed his well-known orchestral concerto, originally for violin, into a jazz ballad recreated for flugelhorn. The Irish folk song “Danny Boy” relates a feeling of vastness and longing; the Thanksgiving Day 2010 passing of my father, to which this album is dedicated, spurred me to interpret this song. Having collaborated on numerous projects with me in the past, New York musicians John Davis (piano), Joe Fitzgerald (bass) and Lieven Venken (drums) recorded “Acacia Flower” with me in Tony Bennett’s studio in January 2011.