Amir ElSaffar's Two Rivers Ensemble featuring Maqam vocalist Hamid Al-Saadi

In commemoration of the 20 year anniversary of the US-led invasion of Iraq, celebrating the culture and resilience of the Iraqi people.

Amir ElSaffar's Two Rivers Ensemble featuring Maqam vocalist Hamid Al-Saadi

Iraqi-American trumpeter, santur player, vocalist, and composer Amir ElSaffar presents a concert of his Two Rivers Ensemble at Drom in New York City on the occasion of the 20-year anniversary of the US-led invasion and occupation of Iraq. ElSaffar’s Two Rivers Ensemble, a sextet combining Iraqi Maqam with American Jazz, will join forces with the renowned Iraqi Maqam singer from Baghdad, Hamid Al-Saadi. On March 20, 2003, the United States launched an unprovoked war on Iraq, based on the false pretense that the Iraqi regime had weapons of mass destruction and was partially responsible for the 9/11 attacks. The invasion and occupation of Iraq devastated the country, plunging it into civil war and cycles of violence that claimed hundreds of thousands of lives and destroyed the country’s infrastructure. It also had consequences beyond Iraq’s borders, destabilizing the region, and pushing millions to flee their homes.

Twenty years later, while for many Americans the “Iraq war” is a thing of the past, Iraqis are still living through the war, whether exiled as a result of violence or living in a country ravaged by conflict and without a functioning state able to provide basic services. These concerts mourn and honor the Iraqi lives lost and the hopes and futures that were broken. They also celebrate the richness, beauty, and resilience of Iraq, its culture, and its people.

Amir ElSaffar: trumpet, santur, vocal Carlo DeRosa: bass Ole Mathisen: tenor saxophone Nasheet Waits: drums Tareq Abboushi: buzuq, percussion Zafer Tawil: oud, nay, percussion Special Guest: Hamid Al-Saadi: Maqam vocal

Amir ElSaffar Amir ElSaffar is an Iraqi-American composer, trumpeter, santur player, and vocalist working at the intersections between jazz, Western classical, and Maqam music of Iraq and the Middle East. An expert jazz trumpeter with a classical background, ElSaffar has created techniques to play microtones and ornaments idiomatic to Arabic music that are not typically heard on the trumpet. He is also one of the few musicians in his generation to master the centuries-old Iraqi maqam tradition, in which he performs actively as a vocalist and santur (Iraqi hammered dulcimer) player. As a composer, ElSaffar has created a unique microtonal harmonic language that merges the Arabic maqam modal system with contemporary Western harmony. ElSaffar tours internationally with several ensembles, including his six-piece Two Rivers Ensemble and 17-piece Rivers of Sound Orchestra, which combine elements of jazz, contemporary music, and Maqam. ElSaffar has received commissions in the US, Europe, and the The Arab world, including compositions for symphony orchestras, string quartets, small chamber ensembles, large and small jazz ensembles, Middle Eastern music ensembles, as well as hybrid projects with Raga, Flamenco, and Subsaharan African trance music, and was the composer-in- residence of the Transcultural Music program at the Royaumont Foundation in France (2016- 2019). ElSaffar is a recipient of the Doris Duke Performing Artist Award (2013), United States Artists Fellowship (2018), and a Hodder Fellowship at Princeton University (2020-2021) where he is working on his first opera, Ruins of the Encampment.

About Hamid Al-Saadi: Hamid Al-Saadi, Iraq’s foremost purveyor of this centuries-old tradition, is renowned for his powerful voice and highly ornamented style, as well as his comprehensive knowledge of the intricate details of the music and poetry of Iraq. He studied with the legendary Yusuf Omar, who named Al-Saadi as his successor. Muhammed Al- Gubbenchi, who taught Omar and was probably the most influential maqam reciter in history, said that he considered Al-Saadi to be the “ideal link to pass on the maqam to future generations.” Al-Saadi is the only person from his generation to have memorized and mastered all 56 maqamat from the Baghdad repertoire and is one of the few vocalists to keep this maqam alive today.