AMIR ELSAFFAR
AMIR ELSAFFAR
Composer, trumpeter, santur player, vocalist, and bandleader Amir ElSaffar has been described in the New York Times as “the celebrated trumpeter and composer who explores vital connections between jazz and Arabic music.” A recipient of the Doris Duke Performing Artist Award and US Artist Fellowship, and Hodder Fellowship at Princeton University, ElSaffar has earned an international reputation for his work combining jazz and western classical music with the microtonal Maqam music of Iraq and the Middle East.
His six piece Two Rivers ensemble and 17-piece Rivers of Sound orchestra, combining Western and Arabic instrumentation and musical languages, have released five critically acclaimed albums and have toured throughout the U.S., Europe, and the Middle East. ElSaffar has also composed numerous works for chamber ensembles, symphony orchestras, jazz and Middle Eastern music ensembles, and transcultural works for Flamenco, Gnawa, and Raga musicians, and has made recent forays into electronic music, in addition to composing for dance, film, and theater.
ElSaffar is an expert trumpeter conversant not only in the language of contemporary jazz, but has created new techniques to play microtones and ornaments idiomatic to Arabic music. He was a member of Cecil Taylor’s large ensembles from 2002 to 2005, and has performed in the ensembles of Archie Shepp, Vijay Iyer, Danilo Perez, and Anthony Davis.
ElSaffar is an expert trumpeter conversant not only in the language of contemporary jazz, but has created new techniques to play microtones and ornaments idiomatic to Arabic music. He was a member of Cecil Taylor’s large ensembles from 2002 to 2005, and has performed in the ensembles of Archie Shepp, Vijay Iyer, Danilo Perez, and Anthony Davis.
Additionally, ElSaffar plays the santur (Iraqi hammered dulcimer) and sings, and is one of the few living performers of the centuries old, now endangered, Iraqi maqam tradition. His traditional Iraqi Maqam ensemble Safaafir, has been active since 2005, and now works with Hamid Al-Saadi, the undisputed master vocalist and authority of the Iraqi Maqam who recently relocated from Baghdad to New York.
Described as “an imaginative bandleader, expanding the vocabulary of the trumpet and at the same time the modern jazz ensemble,” (All About Jazz), ElSaffar is an important voice in an age of cross-cultural music making. ElSaffar has received commissions from the MAP Fund, Arab Fund for Arts and Culture (AFAC), Newport Jazz Festival, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Chamber Music America, Jazz Institute of Chicago, and is composer-in-residence at the Royaumont Foundation in France in 2017-2019.