[Amir ElSaffar / Tareq Abboushi / Carlo DeRosa / Rudresh Mahanthappa / Zaafir Tawil / Nasheet Waits]

muzycy:
Amir ElSaffar: trumpet, vocal, santoor
Ole Mathisen: tenor and soprano saxophone
Zafer Tawil: oud, percussion
Tareq Abboushi: buzuq
Carlo DeRosa: bass
Nasheet Waits: drums

“Iraqi-American trumpeter Amir ElSaffar blends the Iraqi maqam with jazz, creating some fresh, deep, intensely performed music.”
by Chris Kelsey, JazzTimes

“[ElSaffar’s] first album under his own name, Two Rivers (Pi Recordings), [is] a staggering accomplishment that subtly erases the lines between his two chosen disciplines…while plenty of horn players have tapped into Middle Eastern modalities since John Coltrane became fascinated with Eastern sounds in the late 60s, it’s rare to hear it done with such conviction and authority.”
by Peter Margasak, The Chicago Reader

“…there’s an awful lot going on here, none of it betrayed by that whiff of exoticism carried by so many other jazz-initiated fusions of this sort, no matter how sincere. As with Vijay Iyer’s Indian rhythmic cycles or Anthony Brown’s Asianized Gershwin, the difference is all in the artist’s acute awareness of his own.”
by Francis Davis, The Village Voice


Iraqi-American trumpeter Amir ElSaffar put his New York career on hold six years ago to immerse himself in the music of his father’s ancestral past, 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 two international jazz competitions, ElSaffar traveled to Iraq, throughout the Middle East and to Europe, where he pursued masters who could impart to him this centuries-old oral tradition. He quickly became versed in Maqam, and learned to play the santoor (Iraqi hammered dulcimer) and to sing, and he now leads the only ensemble in the US performing Iraqi Maqam, Safaafir. He has also created new techniques for the trumpet that enable microtones and ornaments that are characteristic to Arabic music but are not typically heard on a trumpet.
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