Amir ElSaffar
Jazz Trumpeter
Composer
Iraqi Maqam Singer
Santoor Player
Amir ElSaffar's new CD, Radif Suite, a collaboration with tenor saxophonist Hafez Modirzadeh and featuring Mark Dresser on bass and Alex Cline on drums, is now available in stores, online, and from www.pirecordings.com. Pick up your copy today!
Read the JazzTimes article about ElSaffar and Modirzadeh.
"[Radif Suite] has two primary qualities, one sonic and the other emotional. The configuration of the band, their sound and style of playing are consciously in the tradition of the classic Ornette Coleman quartet, as updated via Masada. ElSaffar and Modirzadeh are not aping that sound and style, though, they’re expanding the possibilities and actually getting closer to the roots...The key is not to think of being modern, but to being old-fashioned, via the blues. If Coleman has always been fundamentally a blues musician, than ElSaffar and Modirzadeh are as well, their blues just have a different location in the geography of the mind, in a place where the West and East meet as wary antagonists and partners in possibility. The horns here play in a highly vocalized style, making use of the expressive opportunities of microtonal intonation, the result being more of a cry than a shout. The sound of the band playing is fascinating; dark, soft, a little sour, the pulse moving fluidly through different paces, at times frenetic and at others still.
The changing treads and the cries at the heart of the music are the vehicles for the emotional expression. In this the music is as simply and honestly made as any can be. This is profoundly sad music and profoundly powerful in the strength and clarity with which it expresses itself. ElSaffar and Modirzadeh seem to be confronting the world they see around them and codifying their reactions to it. There is no interpreting of reality, no offering of blandishments, no attempt to change that world. It’s honest reporting, bearing witness, an incredibly heartfelt and complex expression of things that can’t be put into words. It is moving to listen to, but not sad, as the music is darkly beautiful and the sensation of hearing artists who have so much to say and do so with such unflinching honesty is thrilling. In the great jazz tradition, there is a constant sense of understatement, the idea that what could be said with a scream is instead said with a whisper. And rather than a scream being all there is, the whisper hints at many more secrets inside, just underneath and surface. The ear avidly seeks these out and also gladly follows at the pace ElSaffar and Modirzadeh set, as the music is so worthy of trust and commitment. A clear contender for one of the best recordings of 2010."
--George Grella, The Big City
“ElSaffar's melismatic trumpet lines conveyed tremendous lyric beauty, his phrases bending and twisting in ways that Western ears are not accustomed to hearing”
~Howard Reich, Chicago Tribune
