Photo by Maria Baranova
“The celebrated trumpeter and composer Amir ElSaffar explores vital connections between jazz and Arabic music...”
- The New York Times
Composer, trumpeter, santur player, and vocalist Amir ElSaffar creates music at the intersection of Jazz, Western Classical, Iraqi Maqam, and Electro-Acoustic improvised music.
Latest News
Amir ElSaffar’s interview with SPIN Magazine
December 2025 Winter Issue
“The acclaimed trumpeter has found a way to make Iraqi maqam and Western jazz speak the same language”
–Steve Hochman, SPIN
Epiphanies come, as epiphanies do, in unexpected and often far-flung settings.
For trumpeter Amir ElSaffar, three such horizon-openers converge in his latest album, New Quartet Live at Pierre Boulez Saal. Recorded at the famed Frank Gehry-designed concert hall, it’s a scintillating performance in which he is joined by Ole Mathisen on saxophone, Tomas Fujiwara on drums and Tania Giannouli on a specially tuned “microtonal” piano, their vibrantly shifting and shimmering musical confluences calling to mind the unclassifiable musical journeys of the late Alice Coltrane.
Read full interview here.
New Quartet Live at Pierre Boulez Saal by Amir ElSaffar
Released November 7, 2025
New Quartet Live at Pierre Boulez Saal documents the initial encounter between trumpeter Amir ElSaffar's trio, consisting of Tomas Fujiwara, one of NYC's most in-demand and dynamic drummers, and Ole Mathisen, a tenor saxophonist of unparalleled technique and versatility, with Greek pianist Tania Giannouli, a rising star who has headlined almost every major jazz festival and venue in Europe over the past several years.
The four musicians had a mini-residency consisting of two rehearsal days, a concert, and an all day recording session at the Pierre Boulez Saal in Berlin, a hall known for its phenomenal acoustics and legacy of its namesake, 20th century pioneer conductor and composer Pierre Boulez.
“Amir ElSaffar’s New Quartet have pulled off the trick of creating something that moves and sounds like jazz, but with a much deeper resonance.”
—Chris Ingalls, PopMatters
Maqam Al-Iraq by Hamid Al-Saadi
Released July 18, 2025
Maqam Al-Iraq is Hamid’s first release since 1999, and is one of a handful commercially released albums of the genre.
Vocalist Hamid Al-Saadi performs the revered Iraqi Maqam tradition, accompanied by traditional instruments of the Chalghi Baghdadi, featuring Amir ElSaffar on the santur.
Hamid Al-Saadi (b.1958, Iraq), is the only living singer who has mastered the entire Iraqi Maqam repertoire. Inscribed on UNESCO’s Intangible Heritage list, the Iraqi Maqam is a repertoire of long-form compositions of sung poetry that has been passed down orally for generations. Each maqam is followed by a pesteh, a lighthearted popular song that includes communal singing. The instrumental parts are composed and/or arranged by Amir ElSaffar.
“Soaring over intricate santour lines, Saadi’s sprawling, 20-minute compositions expand on a centuries-old tradition through his indefatigable voice.”
—Ammar Kalia, The Guardian
Inner Spaces
Released March 21, 2025
Inner Spaces is a collaboration between Iraqi-American trumpeter, santur player, vocalist, and composer Amir ElSaffar and electronics virtuoso Lorenzo Bianchi Hoesch. The music explores the intersections of Maqam modes of the Middle East, jazz improvisation, and electronics, creating an immersive, richly textured soundscape that is beyond category.
Released March 21, 2025, in collaboration with Ornithology Records and Maqām Records.
“Their music is strikingly intimate… gently creating a sense of wide-open spaces.”
—Martin Johnson, Downbeat
Dhikra for Two Rivers, Hamid Al-Saadi, and the Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra
The reviews from the July 25, 2023 premiere at Lincoln Center’s David Geffen Hall are in!
"A glorious sense of collective blooming."
New York Times
“A satisfying new fusion”
Financial Times
“the listener’s interest was revived, section by section, by ElSaffar’s ingenuity in tone-mixing of Western and Middle Eastern instruments…the piece’s super-pianissimo ending was followed by enthusiastic, prolonged applause."
NY Classical Review
" [as] ambitious artistically as it is durationally…as convincing an execution of the integration of different musical worlds as I’ve heard, and it managed to pack an emotional wallop by the end."
Bachtrack
New Albums coming out in 2024!
Amir ElSaffar will release two albums in fall, 2024: “Live at the Boulez Saal” with Greek pianist Tania Giannouli, and longtime collaborators, drummer Tomas Fujiwara, and Ole Mathisen; and “Inner Spaces” a duo project with Paris-based electronics artist, Lorenzo Bianchi-Hoesch. Stay tuned for more on these releases!
The Maqam Project
ElSaffar is currently building for an organization, performance space, and archive for the preservation, teaching, and continuation of Arabic Classical Music, in particular the Iraqi Maqam. Stay tuned for program announcements!
Maqam Opera in Arabic
“Ruins of the Encampment,” a Maqam Opera in Arabic, is currently in development, with support from Opera America’s IDEA Residency.
In E half-flat world premiere at Ragas Live Festival at Pioneer Works
ElSaffar’s latest composition, In E half-flat, based on Terry Riley’s seminal work, In C, was composed and premiered with Riley’s blessing. The work will be performed in New York in summer, 2024 - stay tuned for announcements!
ElSaffar plays solo improvised trumpet at the Metropolitan Opera
ElSaffar has been chosen by composer Anthony Davis to play the solo improvised trumpet part in the Met’s production of X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X for its run of performances in November, 2023. Check it out here: https://www.metopera.org/season/in-cinemas/
Launch of Maqām Records
Maqam Records, established by Iraqi-American trumpeter, santur player, vocalist, composer, and bandleader Amir ElSaffar, is a label for releasing and distributing maqam based music. An initiative of ElSaffar’s newly established Maqam Studio in Brooklyn, NY, this label serves as a platform for music based on Maqam modal system of Iraq and the Middle East. The initial releases of Maqam Records will consist primarily of projects led and/or directed by ElSaffar, which span traditional Iraqi Maqam, jazz, contemporary classical, electronic, Raga, and other musical styles. Eventually, the label will feature releases by up-and-coming Arab musicians, as well as selected recordings from the over 7,000 hours of archival materials that have been collected and are being restored through the initiatives of Maqam Studio.