Amir ElSaffar
أمير الصفار
Musician
•
Iraq
•
New York,
United States
Iraqi-American trumpeter, santur player, and maqam singer who composes at the meeting point of Iraqi tradition and jazz.
Amir ElSaffar trained as a classical and jazz trumpeter in Chicago, then spent years apprenticing in the Iraqi maqam tradition — learning its vocal repertoire and the santur — before building a body of work that treats both traditions as equals rather than flavoring one with the other.
His Two Rivers Ensemble and the large-scale Rivers of Sound orchestra have made him one of the most important Iraqi-American voices in creative music, composing microtonal music that jazz institutions now commission and program at scale.
Languages
English, Arabic
Representation
Independent