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. ElSaffar was born near Chicago in 1977 to an Iraqi immigrant father and an American mother. 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. [Pi Recordings]
Tarek Yamani is an Lebanese-American New York-based composer and self-taught jazz pianist. In 2010, he won the Thelonious Monk International Jazz Composers Competition for his composition "Sama'i Yamani," featuring Syrian singer Rasha Rizk. Since the release of his debut album Ashur in 2012, Tarek has been dedicated to exploring relationships between jazz and Arabic rhythms and maqams, which are most evident in his second album Lisan Al Tarab: Jazz Conceptions in Classical Arabic. [bacnyc.org]