Yazz Ahmed

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Yazz Ahmed (* 1983 in Bahrain ) is a Bahraini-British jazz musician ( trumpet , flugelhorn , composition ). She processes the influences of the Arab and Western world in her Psychedelic Arabic Jazz .

Live and act

Ahmed spent her childhood in Bahrain; At the age of nine she came to Great Britain, where she still lives today. She started playing the trumpet when she was nine years old. Encouraged by her grandfather, jazz trumpeter Terry Brown, Ahmed made rapid progress, taking private lessons and playing in the school orchestra. After high school, she earned her bachelor's degree from Kingston University and then studied at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London.

During her time in London, she founded her own group, with which she recorded her debut album Finding My Way Home (2011), on which her exploration of the fusion of jazz and Arabic music began. In 2012 Ahmed represented Bahrain at the London Cultural Olympiad and, in collaboration with Transglobal Underground, joined renowned musicians from the Arabian Gulf. This project, In Transit , was carried out in Dubai and London with the support of the British Council . In 2014 she received a composition grant from Birmingham Jazzlines , which helped her write a new large suite, Alhaan al Siduri , which premiered in 2015 at the CBSO Center in Birmingham. She was also commissioned by Tomorrow's Warriors with the support of PRS Women Make Music to write a suite; Polyhymnia premiered in London that same year by a female cast of the Nu Civilization Orchestra . Her critically acclaimed album La Saboteuse followed in 2017 (together with Shabaka Hutchings on bass clarinet, Naadia Sherriff on Fender Rhodes and Lewis Wright on vibraphone), which made her famous worldwide. She continued u. a. a specially developed quarter-tone flugelhorn that allows her to come very close to the specific scales of Arabic music.

In recent years Ahmed has conducted her ensemble in concerts in the UK and USA, Kuwait, Algeria, Turkey, France and Germany; she has performed at the Leipzig Jazz Days and the Frankfurt Jazz Festival , among others . She has also recorded and performed with Radiohead ( The King of Limbs ), Lee Perry , ABC , Swing Out Sister , Joan as Police Woman , Tarek Yamani and Amel Zen , and toured worldwide with the art rock band These New Puritans . In the jazz field, she also worked with Toshiko Akiyoshi , Rufus Reid , Mark Nightingale , John Zorn and the London Jazz Orchestra.

Discographic notes

  • Finding My Way Home ; Suntara Records 2011
  • La Saboteuse ; Naim Jazz 2017
  • A Shoal of Souls ; Bandcamp 2019 (single)
  • Polyhymnia (RopeaDope Records, 2020)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c German Jazz Festival 2018 (program)
personal data
SURNAME Ahmed, Yazz
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Bahraini-British jazz musician (trumpet, flugelhorn composition)
DATE OF BIRTH 1983
PLACE OF BIRTH Bahrain