Monday, October 1 thru Thursday, October 4, 2018

Amir ElSaffar & Hamid Al-Saadi are presented as part of Duke Performances’ Building Bridges Initiative, funded, in part, by the Doris Duke Foundation for Islamic Art & the National Endowment for the Arts, & co-sponsored by the Duke Islamic Studies Center & the Duke University Middle East Studies Center.

Iraqi-American Amir ElSaffar is one of the United States’ most inventive musicians. A noted jazz trumpeter, ElSaffar is also an ardent advocate for Iraqi maqam, a centuries-old musical repertoire. In Safaafir, the only U.S. group dedicated to exploring this rich musical tradition, he plays santur, a hammered dulcimer central to maqam’s characteristic sound.

This October, as part of Duke Performances’ ongoing Building Bridges: Muslims in America project, ElSaffar will be joined by his teacher Hamid Al-Saadi, one of the last living masters of Baghdadi maqam, for two days of campus engagements and a culminating performance at Duke’s von der Heyden Studio Theater.