Amir ElSaffar

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.​
 

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.​

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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 Lutoslawski 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).

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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.​

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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.

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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.