Iraqi-American trumpeter Amir ElSaffar put his New York career on hold six years ago to immerse himself in the music of his father’s ancestral past, the Iraqi Maqam. The compositions on Two Rivers draws from this experiences, seamlessly cross-pollinating the languages of jazz with the Maqam. The result is a powerful emotional journey through Iraq’s glorious and tragic past and present, and it cries Amir’s personal struggle as an Iraqi-American watching his father’s homeland in turmoil and destruction.
“Harrowing to absorb; full of as much beauty as pain.”
-- BBC World
"...an awful lot going on here, none of it betrayed by that whiff of exoticism carried by so many other jazz-initiated fusions of this sort, no matter how sincere. ... the difference is all in the artist's acute awareness of his own." -- Village Voice
"The result is hypnotic and arresting. The context is so unusual that it feels otherworldly when ElSaffar plays the santoor, or hammered dulcimer, over Carlo DeRosa's mesmerizing bass and the elegant stickwork of the much-in-demand drummer Nasheet Waits... This is new turf..." -- Philadelphia Inquirer