Amir Elsaffar and Two Rivers

Amir ElSaffar and Two Rivers

“Cyclical melodic cells and rhythmic complications took on another cast when deployed by Amir ElSaffar’s Two Rivers Ensemble…This was certainly the first Middle Eastern-imbued jazz combo at Newport to win a standing ovation for its first song.” -Downbeat Magazine on the Two Rivers Ensemble at Newport Jazz Festival

“The band navigates ElSaffar’s still-fresh fusion of jazz and maqam with such masterful technical power and vivid lyrical imagination that you almost immediately forget to be engrossed by the novelty of the sound.” -Peter Margasak, The Chicago Reader

Amir ElSaffar and Two Rivers at Newport Jazz Festival 2013-Adam Kissick for NPR

The Two Rivers Ensemble is a sextet of jazz and Middle Eastern musicians that has made innovative strides in in using the maqam modal system to transform the jazz idiom. Deeply rooted in musical forms of Iraq and nearby regions, the music still speaks the language of swing, improvisation and group interaction, and the resultant sound is distinct from other contemporary cross-cultural musical fusions. After 8 years of extensive performing and touring and the release of two critically- acclaimed albums on Pi Recordings, Inana (2011) and Two Rivers (2007), the Two Rivers Ensemble has developed an instinctive ease with ElSaffar’s highly complex music, enabling the band to play with a creativity that transcends pure technical challenge in a style that is rooted in tradition, while creating an entirely new aesthetic. Amir ElSaffar’s latest work with Two Rivers was a commissioned piece by Newport Jazz Festival that premiered at the festival this past August. www.amirelsaffar.com Two Rivers includes Nasheet Waits, one of the most dynamic drummers in jazz who is best known as a mainstay in Jason Moran’s Bandwagon; bassist Carlo DeRosa, whose CD Brain Dance achieved considerable acclaim; Tareq Abboushi on buzuq (long-necked lute) whose CD, Mumtastic, contains his own blend of jazz and Arabic forms; multi-instrumentalist and virtuoso Zafer Tawil, who is one of the most in-demand Arab musician in New York; and tenor saxophonist Ole Mathisen, a master of microtonal playing who contributes beautifully controlled and technically dazzling playing, serving as the perfect foil to ElSaffar on the front line.

website: www.amirelsaffar.com/two-rivers

audio: Al-Badia from Inana and Flood (Maqam Hijaz Kar) from Two Rivers

video: Two Rivers Ensemble on NPR Field Recordings

Two Rivers Ensemble at Newport Jazz Festival 2013

Downbeat Player's Profile by Howard Mandel

Listen to the Two Rivers Ensemble performance at Newport Jazz Festival 2013 on NPR Music’s JazzSet with Dee Dee Bridgewater.

Inana (2011) and Two Rivers (2007) available on Pi Recordings.

www.amirelsaffar.com Praise for “Inana”

“More fully realized than many similar ethnic fusions, ElSaffar’s incorporation of maqam’s microtones, flexible pitches and meter-less bar lines yields a highly personalized language that reaches well beyond the confines of Western pedagogy for inspiration…Gracefully poised between two worlds, Inana builds upon ElSaffar’s previous accomplishments, establishing an impressive precedent for the creative possibilities of a new global jazz aesthetic.” - Troy Collins, All About Jazz (full article)

“The fun the band is having is visceral: count this among the best albums to come over the transom here this year.” - Lucid Culture, (full article)

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

“Even before you’re impressed with the innovative nature of this album you’ll be struck by the seamlessness with which ElSaffar combines two separate musical traditions while remaining true to the highest aesthetic dictates of each. These pieces are elegant, meditative, refined, and musically adventurous.” - Wanda Waterman, The Voice Magazine (full article)

Praise for "Two Rivers"

"harrowing to absorb; full of as much beauty as pain" - Matt Wells, BBC World Service (full article)

"hypnotic and arresting. The context is so unusual that it feels otherworldly when ElSaffar plays the santoor, or hammered dulcimer, over Carlo DeRosa's mesmerizing bass and the elegant stickwork of the much-in-demand drummer Nasheet Waits…This is new turf, and it's likely to be a lot for either culture to digest. Yet the feeling and eloquence that emanate from this sextet make the experiment worthwhile." - Karl Stark, The Philadelphia Inquirer (full article)

"fresh, deep, intensely performed music…an organic amalgam" - Chris Kelsey, Jazz Times (full article)

"Two Rivers makes a strong case for improvised cross-cultural exchange." - Nate Chinen, New York Times (full article)

www.amirelsaffar.com "deeply affecting, musically adventurous, and provocative…it seems the right time for a musical project that aims to cross boundaries and give insight into the historical and current experiences of the Iraqi People." - Laurel Gross, All About Jazz (full article)

Amir ElSaffar

Iraqi-American trumpeter, santur player, vocalist, and composer Amir ElSaffar has distinguished himself with a mastery of disparate musical styles and a singular approach to combining aspects of Middle Eastern music with American jazz, extending the boundaries of each tradition. A skilled jazz trumpeter with a classical background, ElSaffar has created new techniques to play microtones and ornaments that are idiomatic to Arabic music but are not typically heard on the trumpet. Additionally, he is an acknowledged performer of the classical Iraqi maqam tradition, and performs actively in the US, Europe and the Middle East as a vocalist and santur player. As a composer, ElSaffar has used the microtones found in maqam music to create a unique approach to harmony and melody, establishing himself as an important voice in an age of cross-cultural music making. ElSaffar has received grants to compose music from Chamber Music America, the Jazz Institute of Chicago, the Jerome Foundation, Festival of New Trumpet Music (FONT), and the Painted Bride Arts Center in Philadelphia.

Born near Chicago in 1977 to an Iraqi immigrant father and an American mother, ElSaffar heard recordings of Louis Armstrong, Ella Fitzgerald, and the Blues Brothers Soundtrack at a young age from his father’s record collection. He received his first musical training in the Lutheran Church Choir at the school he attended, and his mother taught him to sing and play American folk songs on ukulele and guitar when he was nine.

ElSaffar found his calling with the trumpet at the age of 10, and by his late teens began performing professionally throughout the Chicago area with blues, jazz, rock, and salsa bands, as well as with the Civic Orchestra of Chicago, where he worked with conductors such as Pierre Boulez, Mstislav Rostropovich, and Daniel Barenboim. In 1999, he performed on Barenboim’s Teldec release, “Tribute to Ellington,” with members of the Chicago Symphony.

In 2000, after completing a degree in classical trumpet from DePaul University, he moved to New York, where had opportunities to work with jazz legend Cecil Taylor, in addition to musicians of his generation such as Rudresh Mahanthappa and Vijay Iyer, who incorporated the music of their cultural backgrounds into a jazz context. In 2001, ElSaffar won the Carmine Caruso International Jazz Trumpet Competition, and the following year used the funds to begin an intensive study of the Iraqi Maqam, in addition to other forms of Arabic music. He went on a five-year journey, traveling to Iraq, throughout the Middle East, and to Europe, pursuing masters who could impart to him this centuries-old oral tradition.

www.amirelsaffar.com He soon became versed in maqam, learning to play the santur (Iraqi hammered dulcimer) and to sing, and in 2006 founded Safaafir, the only ensemble in the US performing Iraqi Maqam in its traditional format.

Later the same year, ElSaffar received commissions from the Painted Bride Arts Center in Philadelphia and from the Festival of New Trumpet Music (FONT), to compose Two Rivers, a suite that invokes Iraqi musical traditions and frames them in a modern Jazz setting. ElSaffar has since received commissions from the Jerome Foundation, the Jazz Institute of Chicago, and Chamber Music America and has continued developing a singular approach to integrating Middle Eastern tonalities and rhythms into an American jazz context, releasing three albums, Two Rivers (2006), Radif Suite (2010), and Inana (2011) to critical acclaim. He has also composed for theater projects and film soundtracks, and appeared in Jonathan Demme’s Oscar-nominated film, Rachel Getting Married. In addition to his busy performance schedule, ElSaffar curates a weekly concert series at Alwan for the Arts, New York’s premiere center for Middle Eastern arts and culture, and directs the Columbia University Middle Eastern Music Ensemble. More press for Amir ElSaffar

“The music deftly combines jazz and Middle Eastern music in a unique way, finding common ground in improvisation… ElSaffar’s studies in both jazz and ethnic music have placed him in good stead to carve out a unique place in the current improvised music. His music and musicial concept is clearly evolving, and this is a very exciting development.”

- Tim Niland, Jazz and Blues (full article)

“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.”

- The Wire

- Wanda Waterman, The Voice Magazine (full article)

www.amirelsaffar.com “ElSaffar has been esteemed for a new methodology towards the much-maligned world music genre….[he]is a jazz musician first, introducing his ethnicity (Iraqi) as an integrated part of his aesthetic.”

- The New York City Jazz Record

ElSaffar’s melismatic trumpet lines conveyed tremendous lyric beauty, his phrases bending and twisting in ways that Western ears are not accustomed to hearing…[Danilo] Perez, [David] Sanchez, [Amir] ElSaffar and [Rudresh] Mahanthappa rank among the most promising figures in jazz today, each redefining the music with cultural influences from around the world.”

- Howard Reich, Chicago Tribune (full article) review of concert with Danilo Perez

Music doesn’t get much more intimate than this. The hypnotic quality of Amir’s singing draws you in. When the song moves on, the rhythm kicks like a bracing splash of cold water. The last such episode inevitably ratchets up the speed and volume just a bit, to big effect.”

- Third Coast Digest (review of Present Music concert featuring Safaafir)

Safaafir […] presented a traditional maqam, lengthy and mesmerizing, its vocal line a melisma-filled ramble through poetic reflection and exuberant pleading. Amir ElSaffar sang as expertly as he played. This trio is an amazing combination of musicians.”

- Rick Walters, Full Article