Amir ElSaffar Navigates Uncharted Blue Notes On 'Alchemy'

Transcript

TERRY GROSS, HOST:

This is FRESH AIR. Trumpeter Amir ElSaffar grew up near Chicago playing jazz. In the early 2000s, while in his mid-20s, he began investigating the music of his Iraqi heritage, studying in Baghdad and with ex-patriot musicians in Europe. Then he began combining the two.

Jazz critic Kevin Whitehead has a review of ElSaffar's latest.

AMIR ELSAFFAR: (Instrumental)

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC FROM ALBUM, "ALCHEMY")

KEVIN WHITEHEAD: Amir ElSaffar from his new disc, "Alchemy," a step forward in defining and refining his concept. A couple of his earlier albums featured what struck me as an uneasy mix of jazz and traditional Iraqi instruments. It was as if the trumpeter were still digesting his influences. Alchemy is for a straight jazz quintet. But ElSaffar brings all he knows about Iraqi rhythm patterns - strong, weak and silent beats, and about the maqams, traditional scales built on narrow intervals and the melodic patterns that go with them.

WHITEHEAD: A maqam colors a performance the way the blues scale tints the blues. The extra challenge is the notes may lie between the ones trumpet and saxophone are designed for, and then the players have to improvise on those scales.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

WHITEHEAD: Among hip New Yorkers, Dan Weiss is the go-to drummer for integrating complex global rhythms into limber jazz time. He and bassist Francois Moutin warm up for this stuff playing Rudresh Mahanthappa's cross-cultural music. Negotiating those Iraqi microtones led Amir ElSaffar to also try on a quarter-tone scale of 24 notes to the octave; it's a way to reconcile or split the difference between Western and Eastern tuning systems. This leads him to some very colorful harmonies - some newly charted blue notes.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

WHITEHEAD: ElSaffar and saxophonist Ole Mathisen play those quarter tones so precisely, they make a freshly tuned piano sound exotic. Eastern scales pose special problems for pianists stuck with the same old 12 notes, but John Escreet compensates using dissonant harmony and the power of suggestion. His solos often reflect the sound of the Iraqi santur. That's a zither played with small hammers, which is basically what a piano is.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

WHITEHEAD: There are echoes of John Coltrane's so-called sheets of sound in John Escreet's scale-based approach, just as Amir ElSaffar's compositions may reference Miles Davis's modal jazz or the oblique melodies of Wayne Shorter and Andrew Hill. The Iraqi strain is a new twist, but cultural hybrids have been jazz's bread and butter since W.C. Handy dropped a tango into his "St. Louis Blues."

Sun Ra's Egyptian-inspired modal pieces of the 1950s also paved the way, and the work of Ra's Egyptian admirer, Salah Ragab. Every new idea becomes new again in time.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

WHITEHEAD: The music on Amir ElSaffar's "Alchemy" doesn't always sound lived-in; the players appear a little cautious at times. A two-week tour might easily cure that. Meantime, there are many global musical systems that jazz hasn't absorbed yet, though everything gradually draws closer together. And jazz tradition keeps stretching to incorporate what musicians bring to it.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

GROSS: Kevin Whitehead writes for Point of Departure, Down Beat, and eMusic, and is the author of "Why Jazz?" He reviewed "Alchemy," the new album by trumpeter Amir ElSaffar on the Pi label. Coming up, John Powers tells us about a novelist he thinks is so good he's forced copies of her books into the hands of friends. This is FRESH AIR. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.