Yazz Ahmed is a British-Bahraini trumpeter, flugelhornist and composer. Her music mixes Arabic and Western influences in what has been described as Psychedelic Arabic Jazz, in which she blurs the boundaries between jazz and electronic music. She has worked with Toshiko Akiyoshi, Rufus Reid, John Zorn, the London Jazz Orchestra, and also recorded and performed with Radiohead, Lee Perry, ABC, Swing Out Sister, Joan as Police Woman, Tarek Yamani and Amel Zen, and the bandThese New Puritans.
Childhood and jazz debut
Born in London to a British mother and a Bahraini father, Ahmed spent her childhood in Bahrain before returning to London at the age of nine. She started playing the trumpet at an early age, encouraged by her maternal grandfatherTerry Brown, a jazz trumpet player. She completed a master's degree from the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London. During this time she formed her own group, with whom she recorded her debut album, Finding My Way Home, in 2011, which inaugurates her exploration of the fusion of Jazz and Arabic music. She represented Bahrain at the London Cultural Olympiad in 2012, where she collaborated with the musicians of Transglobal Underground. The resulting project, In Transit, was supported by the British Council in Dubai and London. Alhaan Al Siduri, a suite written with the support of Birmingham Jazzlines, was premiered in October 2015 at the CBSO Centre in Birmingham. The work is influenced by Ahmed's Bahraini roots, mixing the folk music of pearl divers and traditional wedding songs sung by women. Its second performance, at the Bahrain International Music Festival in 2016, marked Yazz Ahmed's debut in her native country. She was then commissioned by Tomorrow's Warriors, with support from the , to write a suite about "Powerful and Inspirational Women". This led to the London premiere of Polyhymnia in 2015, performed by an all-female cast of the Nu Civilization Orchestra, at the in London, on the occasion of International Women's Day in March 2015.
International recognition
In 2017, her album La Saboteuse earned her international acclaim. It was named Jazz Album of the Year by The Wire, and ranked 18th in Bandcamp's Top 100 Albums. Previously, during her year as a composer at the LSO Soundhub, she had a quarter-tone flugelhorn specially made, allowing her to use scales specific to Arabic music, and to get closer to the spiritual nature of the "blues notes". In August 2018, La Saboteuse Remixed was released, an EP of collaborations with three European electronic DJs: Hector Plimmer, DJ Khalab and Blacksea Não Maya. Four of the tracks of the original album were reinterpreted and then reached a new audience. Shortly afterwards, The Planets 2018 was created especially for a tour of planetariums, on the occasion of the celebration of the centenary of Gustav Holst's suite The Planets and Modern Astronomy. Commissioned by the Ligeti Quartet, Saturn was presented and performed throughout the UK during October 2018. Continuing her explorations of space, Ahmed was then commissioned by the Open University to write a piece inspired by the moon, which was performed at Moon Night in December 2018. Ahmed released her third album, Polyhymnia, in 2019. Named after the Greek muse of music, poetry and dance, a character whom Ahmed describes as "a goddess for the arts", it is a six-movement suite devoted to "six women of exceptional qualities, role models with whom felt a strong bond": Rosa Parks, Malala Yousafzai, Ruby Bridges, Haaifa Al-Mansour, Barbara Thompson and the Suffragettes. Since it was first created in 2015, the project has grown, Yazz Ahmed adding new elements and expanding the group of collaborators. The recordings took place in UK and Europe over a three-year period from 2016 to 2019.
