Jazz Articles about Amir ElSaffar

Discoveries Along The Pitch Continuum

by Amir ElSaffar
April 11, 2010

Growing up in an Iraqi-American household in Chicago, I was exposed to many musical influences from an early age: first Louis Armstrong, then Lutheran Hymns, then the Beatles, then Hendrix, then Miles. Arabic music, though constantly playing in the background during family gatherings, did not capture my attention until I was in my mid-teens and my sister Dena started a Middle Eastern music ensemble, called Salaam. I was intrigued by their music, but knowing that it used 'quarter tones,' it ...

Amir ElSaffar / Hafez Modirzadeh: Radif Suite

by Stuart Broomer
April 7, 2010

This is an illuminating meeting between musicians who share similar cultural background and creative directions. Trumpeter Amir ElSaffar is an Iraqi-American whose work has fused elements of jazz and the maqam music of Iraq. His CD-length suite from 2007, Two Rivers, was a triumph of synthesis and vision. Tenor saxophonist Hafez Modirzadeh is an older Iranian-American who has worked with jazz forms and Persian dastgah to develop his own tonal system that he dubs “chromodal," suggesting perhaps the “harmolodics" of ...

Amir ElSaffar: Two Rivers

by Laurel Gross
January 10, 2008

This exploration of Iraqi, American and Arab sensibilities, rooted in the lands and cultures bordering the Tigris and Euphrates rivers--the two flowing sources of the CD's title--is deeply affecting, musically adventurous and provocative. American-born ElSaffar, a talented New York-based trumpeter/composer, ventured to Iraq six years ago to study the music of his father's country of heritage. He returned to the US with a working knowledge of its centuries-old musical Maqam tradition, rich in emotional and storytelling content ...

Amir ElSaffar: Two Rivers

by Troy Collins
October 26, 2007

The blues are universal. Nowhere is this more implicit than Iraqi-American trumpeter Amir ElSaffar's Pi Recordings debut Two Rivers. Drawing inspiration from the complex and often bloody history surrounding the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, ElSaffar's multi-layered writing is equally rooted in traditional Arabic classicism and Western concepts of jazz improvisation.

A child of the Chicago suburbs, ElSaffar's interest in traditional Iraqi music is fairly recent. A former sideman to pianists Cecil Taylor and Vijay Iyer, ElSaffar made multiple ...