Bio
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.
ElSaffar’s most recent release, Rivers of Sound: The Other Shore (2021, OutHere Records) features his 17-piece Rivers of Sound Orchestra, consisting of musicians from a variety of musical backgrounds. Using resonance as its governing principle, the music incorporates elements of maqam modal music of the Middle East with jazz and other contemporary musical practices to create a unique microtonal musical environment that moves beyond the notions of style and tradition into a realm of uninhibited musical communication. Each musician of the orchestra interacts with the group through the combination of improvisation and composition, the merging of musical languages, maqam and polyphony, toward the goal of reaching a collective state of Tarab, or musical ecstasy.
The Rivers of Sound Orchestra is an expansion of ElSaffar’s six-piece Two Rivers Ensemble. Active since 2006, this sextet explores the juncture between jazz and music of the Middle East. Their 2015 album, Crisis (Pi Recordings), was commissioned by the Newport Jazz Festival was commissioned by the Newport Jazz Festival, where at its 2013 premiere, it made a clear emotional connection to the audience, receiving a rousing standing ovation after just the first piece.
ElSaffar has a wide compositional palette and has worked with a variety of different ensembles and musical formats. His compositions for chamber ensemble include: Ashwaaq (2014) based on Sufi poetry of Ibn Arabi, for Syrian vocalist Khaled Al-Hafez and the Tana String Quartet, which premiered at the Avignon and Aix Festivals in France; Interstices (2017) composed for Ictus ensemble, which premiered at Royaumont in France and had subsequent performances at the Brugge Concertgebow in Belgium'; and Ahwaal (2018), composed for the Lutosloawski Quartet as part of the Jazztopad Festival in Wroclaw, Poland. His work, Maqam/Brass Resonance, for seven winds and percussion, was commissioned by the Berlin Jazz Festival in 2017. He has also composed works for symphony orchestra, including: Suite on the Green (2018, New Haven Symphony Orchestra), Cornu Luminis (2018, Eastern Sierra Symphony, Aix Festival), Two Rivers Symphonic Suite (2020, Amarillo Symphony) and Dhikra (2024 Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra).
He has also worked with various transcultural ensembles. His 2019 piece “Luminiscencia,” consisted of Flamenco vocalist Gema Caballero and dancer Vanesa Aibar, as well as electronics musician Lorenzo Bianchi-Hoesch and Amir’s sister, Dena, on violin, viola, and Iraqi fiddle. The work premiered at the Flamenco Biennale in the Netherlands, and toured throughout Europe. That same year, he premiered “Transe” with Tunisian Stambeli (Gnawa) musicians, musicians from Mali, and Ivory Coast, and others at the Dream City Festival in Tunis. He has also worked extensively with Raga musicians, including a long-term project with Brooklyn Raga Massive entitled RagaMaqam, that premiered at Mass MoCA and Lincoln Center Out-of-Doors, as well as composing a original music for the Bharatanatyam dance troupe, Ragamala.
Born near Chicago in 1977 to an Iraqi immigrant father and an American mother, ElSaffar was drawn to music at a young age, listening incessantly to LPs from his father’s collection, which included Louis Armstrong, Ella Fitzgerald, and the Blues Brothers Soundtrack (but interestingly, no Iraqi music). His first musical training was at the age of five, singing in a Lutheran church choir at the school he attended. His mother, an avid lover of music, introduced him to the music of Bach and Haydn, and taught him to sing and play American folk songs on ukulele and guitar. ElSaffar eventually found his calling with the trumpet in his early teens.
Chicago offered many opportunities for the young trumpeter: he attended DePaul University, earning a degree in classical trumpet, and had the opportunity to study with the legendary principal trumpeter of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Bud Herseth. As a trumpeter of the Civic Orchestra of Chicago, ElSaffar worked with esteemed conductors such as Pierre Boulez, Mstislav Rostropovich, and Daniel Barenboim, and recorded on the latter’s 1999 Teldec release “Tribute to Ellington,” with members of the Chicago Symphony and Don Byron. Additionally, ElSaffar gained experience playing regularly in Chicago’s Blues, Jazz, and Salsa clubs.
He moved to New York at the turn of the century where he performed in the ensembles of jazz legend Cecil Taylor. He also performed with Vijay Iyer and Rudresh Mahanthappa, who were in the early stages of their careers, making forays drawing upon their ancestral background toward forging a new sound.
Amir gradually found himself drawn to the Musical Heritage of his Father’s native country: Iraq. In 2001, after winning the Carmine Caruso Jazz Trumpet Competition, he funded a trip to Baghdad to find and study with the few surviving masters of the Iraqi Maqam. Some were still in Baghdad, but he discovered that most had left the country. Amir spent the next five years pursuing these masters across the Middle East and Europe, learning everything he could about the tradition. During this period he learned to speak Arabic, sing maqam, and play the santoor. His main teacher during this period was vocalist Hamid Al-Saadi, currently the only living person who has mastered the entire Baghdadi Maqam tradition.
In 2006 ElSaffar 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 invoking Iraqi musical traditions framed in a modern Jazz setting. ElSaffar has since received commissions from the Jazz Institute of Chicago (2008), the Jerome Foundation (2009), Chamber Music America (2009), Present Music (2010), The Metropolitan Museum of Art (2013), The Newport Jazz Festival (2013), Morgenland Festival (2013) and the Royaumont Foundation (2014), creating works integrating Middle Eastern tonalities and rhythms into an contemporary contexts.
He currently leads four critically-acclaimed ensembles: The 17-piece Rivers of Sound Orchestra; Two Rivers, which combines the musical languages and instrumentation of Iraqi Maqam and contemporary jazz; the Amir ElSaffar Quintet, performing ElSaffar’s microtonal compositions with standard jazz instrumentation; Safaafir, the only ensemble in the US performing and preserving the Iraqi Maqam in its traditional format; and The Alwan Ensemble, the resident ensemble of Alwan for the Arts, specializing in classical music from Egypt, the Levant, and Iraq. In addition, he has worked with jazz legends Cecil Taylor and Archie Shepp, and prominent jazz musicians, Danilo Perez, Mark Dresser, Gerry Hemingway, Marc Ribot, Henry Grimes, and Oliver Lake.