Novrasli was born in Baku, Azerbaijan in 1977 and by the age of three it was clear he was a child prodigy – eight years later he was performing with a symphony orchestra at Azerbaijan's State Philharmonic Hall. His career trajectory saw him performing the works of Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, Chopin and Rachmaninoff in concert halls before discovering jazz, coming under the influence of one of the pioneers of the music in Azerbaijan, pianist Vagif Mustafa Zadeh, acclaimed for fusing jazz and traditional Azerbaijani folk music known as mugham. Novrasli's style emerges from a confluence of three idioms of classical expressed through the prism of early Jarrett and Corea. His delicate, filigree touch conceals a love of broad, harmonically rich clusters, which often emerge at the climax of his improvisations. Whether Hoenig's drumming is a good fit for this richly talented pianist is moot – he has a tendency to be over-busy, distracting from musical values shaped two thousand miles from New York.