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Yazz Ahmed

Yazz Ahmed is a British-Bahraini trumpet player and composer who seeks to blur the lines between jazz, electronic sound design, bringing together the sounds of her mixed heritage. Her music has been described as ‘psychedelic Arabic jazz, intoxicating and compelling’.

In recent years she has led her various ensembles in concerts around the UK and abroad, including performances in New York, Toronto, Kuwait, Algiers, Berlin, Köln, Paris, Istanbul, Tunis and Amsterdam, and at major festivals such as WOMAD, Molde Jazz, Pori Jazz and Love Supreme.

Yazz has also recorded and performed with Radiohead, Lee Scratch Perry, Nile Rodgers, ABC, Swing Out Sister, Joan as Police Woman, Tarek Yamani, Amel Zen and toured the world with These New Puritans. She recently appeared as a guest soloist/composer with Arturo O’Farrill’s Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra.

In 2012, Yazz represented Bahrain in London’s Cultural Olympiad, joining renowned musicians from the Arabian Gulf in collaboration with Transglobal Underground. This project, In Transit, was supported by the British Council and was performed in Dubai and London.

Yazz was awarded a jazz fellowship from Birmingham Jazzlines in 2014, who supported her during the course of a year in writing a major new suite, Alhaan al Siduri, premiered in October 2015 at the CBSO Centre, Birmingham. One year later the second performance marked Yazz’s debut in her paternal homeland at the Bahrain International Music Festival.

In 2015, Tomorrow’s Warriors commissioned Yazz, with support from PRS Women Make Music, to write a suite inspired by courageous and influential women. Polyhymnia was premiered at the Purcell Room by a special all-female ensemble at the WOW! Festival in March 2015.

During her year as an LSO Soundhub composer in 2016, Yazz explored writing music for her newly developed quarter-tone flugelhorn, a unique instrument which enables her to get closer to the spiritual nature of the ‘blue notes’ in Arabic music.

2017 saw the release of her second album, La Saboteuse, on Naim Records. The album made a global impact, gaining multiple rave reviews and making many ‘best of 2017’ lists around the world, including Jazz Album of the Year in The Wire magazine and achieving the number 18 spot in Bandcamp’s top 100 albums (all genres). “..this is enchanting, late night music that floats on the liminal space between dreams and reality. And for sheer, unconquered beauty, there are few albums of any genre that reach these heady heights. Ahmed, in diving deep within herself, comes back up for air with a mysterious, wondrous artifact humming in her hands,” the2010s.net

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Book Review

Talking The Groove: Jazz Words From The Morning Star

Read "Talking The Groove: Jazz Words From The Morning Star" reviewed by Chris May


Talking The Groove: Jazz Words From The Morning Star Chris Searle 394 Pages ISBN: 978-1-9163206-7-3 Jazz In Britain 2024 Although Marxist-Leninist theory itself has proved to be, at best, a blind alley--and, at worst, in practice the enemy of the freedoms it claims to champion--writers from the Left have contributed much to the study of jazz, an art form which has ideas of freedom, both artistic and societal, at its core. The ...

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Radio & Podcasts

A Fanfare of Trumpets from Yazz Ahmed to Bubber Miley + Kenny Clarke/Francy Boland Band

Read "A Fanfare of Trumpets from Yazz Ahmed to Bubber Miley + Kenny Clarke/Francy Boland Band" reviewed by David Brown


This week on the Jazz Continuum we get ready for Philly Shows with Helen Sung, Fieldwork and Craig Taborn. Live from Haverford College with Marian McPartland and Sun Ra. A fanfare of trumpets gather with Ruby Braff, Bubber Miley, Freddie Hubbard, Roy Eldridge, Yazz Ahmed and International Sweetheart of Rhythm Clora Bryant. We dig into a pile of Lp's from The Kenny Clarke / Francy Boland Big Band.Playlist Thelonious Monk “Esistrophy (Theme)" from Live at the It Club-Complete ...

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Radio & Podcasts

Yazz Ahmed, Kansas Smitty's, Fabrizio Bosso, Vulfpeck & More New Releases

Read "Yazz Ahmed, Kansas Smitty's, Fabrizio Bosso, Vulfpeck & More New Releases" reviewed by Ludovico Granvassu


This week's edition revolves around tributes to composers, singers, songwriters, cities and... earworms! And a fascinating project by Brooklyn-based Dutch singer Vivienne Aerts celebrating jazz women and female pioneers of the cacao trade. Happy listening. PlaylistBen Allison “Mondo Jazz Theme (feat. Ted Nash & Pyeng Threadgill)" 0:00 Yazz Ahmed “It for Chick" Blue Note Re:imagined II (Blue Note) 0:16 Host talks 5:25 Kansas Smitty's “Ghosts" We're Not in Kansas Anymore (Ever) 7:14 Snarky Puppy “Trinity" Empire ...

9
Live Review

Yazz Ahmed with Emel and Rabih Abou-Khalil at Barbican Hall

Read "Yazz Ahmed with Emel and Rabih Abou-Khalil at Barbican Hall" reviewed by Chris May


Yazz Ahmed With Emel And Rabih Abou-Khalil Barbican Hall jny:London 13 December, 2022 The intersection of jazz and classical Arabic music, both of which have improvisation and rhythm at their core, has long been fertile ground for exploration. Tonight's concert featured two adepts in the field, the British-Bahraini trumpeter Yazz Ahmed and the Lebanese oudist Rabih Abou-Khalil. Since her first album in 2011, Ahmed has blended jazz with Arabic music, with the accent on jazz, ...

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In Pictures

Isole Che Parlano 2022

Read "Isole Che Parlano 2022" reviewed by Luciano Rossetti


A collection of photos from the Isole che parlano, organized by Paolo Angeli and Nanni Angeli, in Palau (North Sardinia) from September 8, 2022 to September 11, 2022 featuring Alessandro Santacaterina, Synne Sanden, Yazz Ahmed, Christian Ferlaino, Ozan Baysal, Melisa Yildirin, Tenore Ususule de Siniscola, Tenore S'arburinu de Orune, Pororoca and the Franco Zecchin exhibition. ...

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Radio & Podcasts

Olive Branch or Pat Nip?

Read "Olive Branch or Pat Nip?" reviewed by Patrick Burnette


After the “politicapocalypse" (Mike's coinage--ask him) of the previous episode, the boys decide to gently transition away from that minefield by looking at two artists more obliquely engaged with political discourse and two artists more or less removed from it entirely (by temperament and timing). To soothe Pat's scalded nerves, Mike brings a couple “cool" cats to the party, though by the end he agrees that one of them just might have been satirizing a certain mid-sixties obsession with Latin ...

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Interview

Yazz Ahmed: The Inclusive Saboteuse

Read "Yazz Ahmed: The Inclusive Saboteuse" reviewed by Ludovico Granvassu


Pretty much from the beginning of her career, trumpet and flugelhorn player Yazz Ahmed has been intent on sabotaging the walls and fences that divide the jazz world, championing an inclusive vision in which Arabic traditions blend seamlessly with loops and electronics, and rock and pop can offer jazz plenty of inspiration. Two years after the success of the album that brought her under the limelight, La Saboteuse (Naim, 2017), her latest release, Polyhymnia (Naim/Ropeadope, 2019), confirms her ...

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