The Other Shore

Description

Trumpeter, composer, santur player, and American-Iraqi singer, Amir ElSaffar is a visionary, a pioneer of trans-cultural exploration. His Two Rivers Ensemble, consisting of six musicians and formed in 2006, was one of the first projects to combine jazz with Iraqi maqām. In 2015, ElSaffar expanded the group to form Rivers of Sound, made up of 17 members. Their 2017 album was described by the New York Times as “a striking debut album... full of momentum, but it is not a single moving body. It seems rather to flow and overflow the boundaries,” and Pitchfork called it “... a grand statement of intent - true to many traditions, even as it remains accessible to all.” With The Other Shore, the second release from Rivers of Sound, ElSaffar broadens the group's musical palette by exploring new territories, with complex rhythmic cells and microtonal melodies that blend into lush improvised textures, created by the unique timbres of the instruments and the chemistry among the exceptional musicians that make up this orchestra, including: Fabrizio Cassol (alto saxophone), Nasheet Waits (drums), Miles Okazaki (guitar), Zafer Tawil (oud, percussion), Tareq Abboushi (buzuq), John Escreet (piano), and Ole Mathisen (tenor saxophone).