Amir ElSaffar / Hafez Modirzadeh Quartet with Mark Dresser and Alex Cline - FREE SHOW!!

October 06, 2009

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A Destined Collaboration: Amir ElSaffar and Hafez Modirzadeh, each of mixed heritage (Iraqi American and Iranian American, respectively) whose musical careers are dedicated to expressing their ancestral traditions within a highly personalized and creative jazz language, have now teamed together to articulate a unprecedented form of music with forward-looking potential. ElSaffar, originally from Chicago, has spent years traveling abroad seeking out masters who could impart to him the Iraqi maqam tradition, and composed the highly acclaimed Two Rivers Suite (released in 2007 on Pi Recordings), his first major work joining maqam with contemporary improvised music. Hafez, based in the San Francisco Bay area and fifteen years Amir’s senior, had spent years under the guidance of Iranian master musician, Mahmoud Zoufounoun, learning the Iranian counterpart to maqam, known as dastgah. By 1992, Hafez had developed his own "chromodal" approach to intercultural musical practice, which allows for the co-existence of multiple traditions within one cohesive system, and has since composed a large body of uncompromisingly original work that adapts Persian tuning into a variety of musical contexts.

ElSaffar and Modirzadeh were aware of each other for a number of years, thanks to mutual friends such as Vijay Iyer, Rudresh Mahanthappa, and JD Parran, who repeatedly talked to each about the other. Amir was first exposed to Hafez's music when Iyer played him In Chromodal Discourse (first released in 1993 on Asian improv Records) in 2001, and knew immediately that Hafez was someone he would like to make music with. Finally, in late 2008, Fred Ho brought Hafez and Amir together for his own big band recording session in New York, and the chemistry was immediate. Fortunately, Amir had a performance the following evening at the Jazz Gallery, and Hafez was able to join his quartet for the engagement. This encounter left ElSaffar with the determination to travel to the West Coast a few months later to develop concepts with Modirzadeh, where intense practice together over a 10-day period led to a collaboration on four performances, the most notable of which was at the Jazz Bakery in Los Angeles, where they were joined by world-renowned bassist Mark Dresser and the brilliant drummer, Alex Cline. All four musicians were left enthused and anxious for another chance to play together. They performed together once again in New York City in June of 2009, and are now scheduled to record a CD for Pi Recordings, to be released in early 2009.

Iraqi American trumpeter Amir ElSaffar is an accomplished jazz and classical trumpeter who has collaborated with a variety of artists, including Cecil Taylor, Rudresh Mahanthappa, Vijay Iyer, and Daniel Barenboim. In 2002, ElSaffar put his New York career on hold to immerse himself in the music of his father 's homeland, the Iraqi maqam. He went on a tremendous quest, traveling to Iraq and throughout the Middle East and Europe in urgent pursuit of masters who could impart to him this centuries-old oral tradition. He quickly became versed in maqam, learning to play the santour (Iraqi hammered dulcimer) and to sing, and created new techniques for the trumpet that enable Arabic microtones and ornaments to be played in the rarest of fashion on this instrument. His 2007 release, Two Rivers (Pi Recordings), is a groundbreaking, emotionally charged work that invokes ancient Iraqi musical traditions and frames them ina modern jazz setting. Described by BBC World as "harrowing to absorb; full of as much beauty as pain," and by Downbeat as "hauntingly beautiful," the CD appeared on several top 10 lists of 2007, and was the Village Voice's runner-up debut jazz release of that year.

For over two decades, from Beijing to Tehran, London to Granada, saxophonist/theorist Hafez Modirzadeh has performed and published on his pioneering “chromodal” concept, a cross-cultural musical approach developed from his own American jazz and Iranian dastgah heritages and featured on such critically acclaimed releases as "The Peoples Blues" (1996, on XDOT25), “Dandelion” (2003), and "Bemsha Alegria" (2007, on Disques Chromodal).  His paths have crossed with numerous masters from world traditions, including Ornette Coleman, Mahmoud Zoufonoun, members of the original AACM, as well as his own generation of Asian American musical artists.  Modirzadeh is a Senior Fulbright Scholar, NEA Jazz Fellow, and Professor of World Cultures in Music at San Francisco State University.

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