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

2011 Rhapsody Jazz Critics Poll Record of the Year #26

“Inana is the most seamless meld yet of the various traditions ElSaffar represents; it offers listeners a thoroughly engaging, sensual, and enlightening encounter between the ancient and the modern, not in juxtaposition, but as seamless continuation in musical history and innovation.
* * * * 1 AllMusicGuide.com

“Inana avoids the sensationalistic and touristic in favor of the sincere and investigatory, searching for a common or at least consonant elements of the vocabularies of jazz and classical Arabic music…”
* * * * 1 - by John Corbett, Downbeat Magazine

“Inana is the most seamless meld yet of the various traditions ElSaffar represents; it offers listeners a thoroughly engaging, sensual, and enlightening encounter between the ancient and the modern, not in juxtaposition, but as seamless continuation in musical history and innovation.”
* * * * 1 - Allmusic.com

“hypnotic and utterly unique”
By Areif Sless-Kitain, TimeOut Chicago

“Amir ElSaffar is uniquely poised to reconcile jazz and Arabic music without doing either harm…ElSaffar’s music [is] the result of engagement across the board, presented with clarity and eloquence.”
By The Wire



Inana is the follow-up to trumpeter Amir ElSaffar’s critically acclaimed 2007 release, Two Rivers (Pi 24), which Allmusic.com called “as impressive a debut as we’ve had in America in the 21st century.” ElSaffar has continued to extend his compositional palette in the four years since that release: While Two Rivers combined elements found in the modal music of the Iraqi maqam with the rhythms and aesthetics of modern jazz, Inana builds on those concepts to include a microtonal harmonic and melodic language, influenced by the pitch-flexibility of Mid.......
more

2011 Rhapsody Jazz Critics Poll Record of the Year #26

“Inana is the most seamless meld yet of the various traditions ElSaffar represents; it offers listeners a thoroughly engaging, sensual, and enlightening encounter between the ancient and the modern, not in juxtaposition, but as seamless continuation in musical history and innovation.
* * * * 1 AllMusicGuide.com

“Inana avoids the sensationalistic and touristic in favor of the sincere and investigatory, searching for a common or at least consonant elements of the vocabularies of jazz and classical Arabic music…”
* * * * 1 - by John Corbett, Downbeat Magazine

“Inana is the most seamless meld yet of the various traditions ElSaffar represents; it offers listeners a thoroughly engaging, sensual, and enlightening encounter between the ancient and the modern, not in juxtaposition, but as seamless continuation in musical history and innovation.”
* * * * 1 - Allmusic.com

“hypnotic and utterly unique”
By Areif Sless-Kitain, TimeOut Chicago

“Amir ElSaffar is uniquely poised to reconcile jazz and Arabic music without doing either harm…ElSaffar’s music [is] the result of engagement across the board, presented with clarity and eloquence.”
By The Wire



Inana is the follow-up to trumpeter Amir ElSaffar’s critically acclaimed 2007 release, Two Rivers (Pi 24), which Allmusic.com called “as impressive a debut as we’ve had in America in the 21st century.” ElSaffar has continued to extend his compositional palette in the four years since that release: While Two Rivers combined elements found in the modal music of the Iraqi maqam with the rhythms and aesthetics of modern jazz, Inana builds on those concepts to include a microtonal harmonic and melodic language, influenced by the pitch-flexibility of Mid.......
more