BIO

Iraqi-American trumpeter Amir ElSaffar put his New York career on hold in 2002 to immerse himself in the music of his ancestry, the Iraqi Maqam. Already an accomplished jazz and classical trumpeter, having performed with esteemed artists such as Cecil Taylor, Rudresh Mahanthappa, Vijay Iyer, and Daniel Barenboim, and having won the Carmine Caruso International Jazz Trumpet competition, ElSaffar traveled to Iraq, throughout the Middle East and to Europe, where he pursued masters who could impart to him the centuries-old tradition. He quickly became versed in Maqam and found ways to adapt the microtones and ornaments to his trumpet playing. He went on to learn to play the santoor (Iraqi hammered dulcimer) and to sing, and he now leads the only ensemble in the US performing Iraqi Maqam, Safaafir. This ensemble has researched ancient practices that have been lost in recent generations, and is now reviving these sounds, continuing the legacy of the great masters of the Maqam tradition.

In 2006, upon receiving a commission from the Painted Bride Arts Center in Philadelphia, ElSaffar composed Two Rivers, a groundbreaking and emotionally-charged suite that invokes Iraqi musical traditions and frames them in a modern Jazz setting. The recording, recently released on Pi Recordings, was described by JazzTimes "fresh, deep, intensely performed music...an organic amalgam," and by All About Jazz as "a stirring example of the creative possibilities of international jazz in the 21st century," and by the Philadelphia Inquirer as “hypnotic and arresting.” In addition, Two Rivers appeared on the Boston Globe's Top 10 list of 2007, Philadelphia City Paper’s top Jazz releases of 2007, and was selected by the Village Voice critic's poll as the runner-up Debut jazz release of 2007.

For more about Two Rivers, please click here.

Amir's Story:

Born in 1977 near Chicago, Illinois to an Iraqi father and American mother, Amir was influenced at a young age by an array of musical styles, including Classical, Rock, Jazz and Chicago-style Blues. He was exposed to Iraqi and Arabic music at a young age, but his interest in this music would not come until much later. He attended DePaul University in Chicago, where he earned a Bachelor's degree in Classical Trumpet in 1999.

As a Classical trumpeter, Amir recorded with Daniel Barenboim and members of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra on the 1999 Teldec release, "Tribute to Ellington," and was a member of the Civic Orchestra of Chicago from 1997-1999, performing with such esteemed conductors as Pierre Boulez, Mstislav Rostropovich, and Maestro Barenboim.

As a Jazz trumpeter, Amir won two major competitions: the 2001 Carmine Caruso Jazz Trumpet Competition and the 2001 International Trumpet Guild Jazz Improvisation Competition, and has performed with esteemed artists such as Cecil Taylor, Rudresh Mahanthappa, Vijay Iyer, Randy Brecker, Miya Masaoka, and Samir Chatterjee, among others.

Amir's journey into the Iraqi Maqam began in his 2002 trip to Baghdad as he was seeking out inspiration for his Jazz compositions and improvisations. What was supposed to be two weeks turned into six months, as Amir became completely taken by the Maqam, and was determined to learn as much as he could about this rich musical tradition. He began studying Maqam singing and learning to play the santoor (Iraqi hammered-dulcimer). In early 2003, with the war looming, Amir left Iraq and went to Europe to continue his research under the tutelage of Maqam masters Hamid al-Saadi, Baher al-Rejeb, and Farida Mohammed Ali. Amir has now mastered a significant portion of the Maqam repertoire, which has very few surviving masters and is one of the most sophisticated and complex traditional music forms of the Middle East.

Two Rivers

“Two Rivers invokes the Tigris and the Euphrates, whose floods were forces of creation and destruction in the world’s first cities. It recalls Iraq's history, glorious and tragic, and mourns the blood and ink streams that coursed through Baghdad after it was ransacked in 1258, ending its golden age. Two Rivers resounds with the joy inside the pain of the Iraqi heart. It evokes soldiers and tanks pummeling over the world's most ancient and holy lands—lawlessness in the land of Hammurabi. Two Rivers flows from the two streams of blood—Iraqi and American—that run through my body. It is the struggle for existence, the illusion of otherness, and finding balance: between separateness and unity, unity and diversity, self and other, borders and openness, chaos and order, harmony and dissonance, equal and non-tempered scales, "jazz" and maqam. It is the music of this land…all in one stream.” --From the liner notes of Two Rivers 

Described by BBC World as "harrowing to absorb; full of as much beauty as pain,"Amir ElSaffar's Two Rivers is a powerful emotional journey through Iraq's glorious and tragic past and present. The compositions of this suite invoke Iraqi Maqam melodies, each of which is believed to have a unique spiritual essence and to contain an aspect of Iraq’s history and society, and set them to heavy grooves, free jazz-like ensemble playing, and multi-layered sound textures.

Amir ElSaffar and his sextet, which includes Rudresh Mahanthappa (saxophone), Nasheet Waits (drums), Carlo DeRosa (bass), Tareq Abboushi (buzuq and percussion), and Zaafir Tawil (oud, violin and dumbek), meld styles and seamlessly cross-pollinate the languages of ancient and modern, East and West. Elsaffar's compositions are some of the first in the history of jazz to make use of Arabic modality and its non-western tunings.

"deeply affecting, musically adventurous, and provocative…it seems the right time for a musical project that aims to cross boundaries and give insight into the historical and current experiences of the Iraqi People" All About Jazz New York

"[Two Rivers] bridges the two worlds with empathy and precision..." Downbeat

"Iraqi-American trumpeter and visionary Amir ElSaffar is weaver of genres…[his] mindset conveys a wide-ranging fusion of disparate musical climates as his methodologies harvest a rather joyous celebration of the spirits. Simply put, it sounds as though it was meant to be." Glenn Astarita, http://www.jazzreview.com/cd/review-19325.html

Dan Melnick’s Review from www.soundslope.com:

“There's something universally recognizable about an opening invocation. Centering around a drone note, a sense of warming up, tuning, intoning; all signs point to a beginning. Melody is emergent and seems to sprout organically from the primordial stew of sound. There's a beautiful mix of timbres and rhythms, with a relaxed intensity to the groove and the focus revolves around the orbit of the singular drone. The album is called Two Rivers, referring to the historic tributaries of the Tigris and Euphrates, and the land that lies between. It could be considered politically relevant to make an album that combines the form and instruments of traditional Iraqi Maqam with the improvised spirit and instrumentation of a jazz combo. I use the word "could," because apart from the relevance of this meeting of musical traditions in today's world, there is a beautiful recording here with music that is pertinent and worthwhile listening.

However, to ignore the state of the world surrounding music is to perpetrate a great injustice to the relevance and agency of music to reflect, to create Utopian musical spaces where barriers are broken down, and to bring to the forefront underlying beauty that otherwise might be lost amongst violence and destruction.

There's a patience in the proceedings here that I find extremely rewarding as a listener. Tension is built and brought to peaks, but it is never in a hurry to do so, and the slope happens so subtly and gradually that it's easy to forget it's going somewhere until it has arrived. Amir ElSaffar's trumpet playing is fantastic throughout, utilizing scales and timbres that are certainly referential to the musical heritage of Iraqi Maqam while also incorporating the language and phrasing of jazz.

Santoor, oud, doumbek, buzuq, frame drum.

Trumpet, alto sax, bass, drums, violin.

A meeting of musics. Can musics meet? What happens when they do? Do they shake hands, retain separate identities and commingle? Or do they do dirty things like fuse into a fusion? There, I said it. Let's be honest though, fusion is only dirty if jazz is fusing with profane musics like rock and roll or pop music. If it fuses with folk musics from around the world or other art music, that's perfectly acceptable. Right? Musics meet in individuals whose identities are able to span continents. It's interesting to note that the shifting of intervallic preference and timbre can lead to denotation of musical culture and locality.

Don Cherry once said: "When people believe in boundaries, they become part of them."

Amir ElSaffar, Rudresh Mahanthappa, Dafer Tawil, Tareq Abboushi, Carlo DeRosa, Nasheet Waits. It really sounds like a band, great chemistry and interplay, and everyone plays with bravado and gusto.

What good is a word like jazz if it can't let music like this into the shade of its stylistic tree? If it can't give shelter from the storm under its genre umbrella? In the liner notes, ElSaffar talks about similarities between the heterophony native to maqam music and Cecil Taylor's music. Cecil Taylor! Maqam! Heterophony! There's something going on there, but I can't quite put my finger on it.

Have I mentioned that this music is hip? Because it most certainly is. Khosh Reng features a groove in 17/8 that cries out to be danced to, joyously. Blood and Ink begins with a poem that is moving without knowing anything about its translation.

All in all, this is a great album from Mr. ElSaffar and his band and comes highly recommended. It's an album of music that spans borders, incorporates seemingly disparate elements that end up comfortable bedfellows, and comes out with an end product that doesn't feel forced in bringing it all together. The feat of apparent effortlessness is a cherished quality in the music I enjoy, and this fits the bill.”