Fire Museum Presents :
Amir ElSaffar
Sam Shalabi
Sunday, May 22nd 8:00 PM
House Gallery 1816
1816 Frankford Ave
Philadelphia
FREE
This event made possible by a grant from the Penn Treaty Special Services District
Amir ElSaffar (NYC):
Trumpeter, santur player, vocalist, and composer Amir ElSaffar has distinguished himself with a mastery of diverse musical traditions and a singular approach to combining Middle Eastern musical languages with jazz and other styles of contemporary music. A recipient of the 2013 Doris Duke Performing Artist Award, ElSaffar has been described as "uniquely poised to reconcile jazz and Arabic music without doing either harm," (the Wire) and "one of the most promising figures in jazz today" (Chicago Tribune)....
read more
Fire Museum Presents :
Amir ElSaffar
Sam Shalabi
Sunday, May 22nd 8:00 PM
House Gallery 1816
1816 Frankford Ave
Philadelphia
FREE
This event made possible by a grant from the Penn Treaty Special Services District
Amir ElSaffar (NYC):
Trumpeter, santur player, vocalist, and composer Amir ElSaffar has distinguished himself with a mastery of diverse musical traditions and a singular approach to combining Middle Eastern musical languages with jazz and other styles of contemporary music. A recipient of the 2013 Doris Duke Performing Artist Award, ElSaffar has been described as "uniquely poised to reconcile jazz and Arabic music without doing either harm," (the Wire) and "one of the most promising figures in jazz today" (Chicago Tribune).
ElSaffar is an expert trumpeter with a classical background, conversant not only in the language of contemporary jazz, but has created techniques to play microtones and ornaments idiomatic to Arabic music that are not typically heard on the trumpet. Additionally, he is a purveyor of the centuries old, now endangered, Iraqi maqam tradition, which he performs actively as a vocalist and santur player. As a composer, ElSaffar has used the microtones found in Iraqi maqam music to create an innovative approach to harmony and melody. 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.
In addition to performing and composing, ElSaffar is Music Curator at Alwan for the Arts, New York's hub for Arab and Middle Eastern culture, which hosts semi-monthly concerts and the annual Maqam Fest. In 2013, he collaborated with the Metropolitan Museum to create a festival of Iraqi culture in 2013. He also teaches maqam classes at Alwan, and is the director of the Middle Eastern Music Ensemble at Columbia University, where he also teaches jazz ensembles.
Sam Shalabi (Montreal/Cairo):
"Sam Shalabi is nothing if not prolific. His numerous recordings place him in a category of his own. The completely solo Music for Arabs is a carefully assembled musical sound collage that reflects post-revolution urban Egypt (Cairo, more specifically, where he lives). Shalabi portrays his impressions across six tracks on which he plays all the instruments, from drums and Arabic percussion instruments to daf, mazhar, oud, rabat, salamiyyah, zummara, harmoniums, and keyboards, as well as guitars, samplers, and drum machines. Also playing a large role are overheard street and marketplace conversations repurposed through tape manipulation.
While the press release describes this as something akin Brian Eno's Music for Airports for taxi drivers, there isn't anything remotely ambient about this album. Its "ambience," if one can call it that, is chaotic, yet reflects an inner order. The opening "Music for the Egyptians" is a long work that weaves together a fluid, sometimes jarring collection of musics, both traditional and modern, while spoken conversations and sonic textures provide a glimpse of what transpires in the moment as one passes through a busy Cairo street: the echoes of the revolution and the tension of what comes next are ever present in their portrayal of workaday life. Western ears not acquainted with Arabic may be shut out of the conversational snippets, but the music provides clues as to what they might contain -- and how different the everyday is in Cairo from say, New York or London. Arab classical, folk, and modern vanguard traditions swirl together in "Revolution," where reverb, oud, and warped, sung, and spoken voices resemble everything from Middle Eastern classical music to children speaking to a muezzin's call to prayer; all these collide in a strangely ordered yet intricate kind of harmonious whole. "The Enemy of My Enemy" is foreboding and brooding, yet hilarious in its mad weave of cultural traditions and modern Western influences, using distorted guitars and basslines alongside traditional instruments and melodies. Closing bookend "Music for the Egyptians, Pt. 2" is a long, beautiful oud solo; the only accompaniment is a droning, high-pitched keyboard in the backdrop that whispers the set to a finish. For all of its deliberate zaniness, good-natured humor, and subversive cultural and musical juxtapositions, Music for Arabs is a serious work that is a love song to Egypt." - Thom Jurek/All Music
show less
