Yazz Ahmed

Yazz Ahmed performs as a trumpeter while also composing and leading bands, channeling her affinity for post-bop jazz together with her Middle Eastern background. In the approach she labels “psychedelic Arabic jazz,” she merges jazz with electronic production techniques. Released in 2017, her second album La Saboteuse earned widespread international praise and confirmed her strengths as both soloist and arranger. Ensembles under her direction have appeared at festivals throughout Europe, North America, and the Middle East. Within the genre-crossing London jazz community of the twenty-first century, she occupies a leading place.

Born in Bahrain in 1983, Ahmed spent her childhood in Carshalton, Surrey, England, where she took up the trumpet at age nine. Her grandfather, jazz trumpeter Terry Brown, encouraged her rapid progress through private study and participation in the school orchestra. After secondary school she completed a bachelor’s degree at Kingston University and pursued postgraduate work at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London. While based in the capital she assembled her own ensemble and issued her debut album Finding My Way Home, which already displayed her fusion of modal jazz with Arabic scales and rhythms. In 2011 she gained further notice by playing flügelhorn on Radiohead’s The King of Limbs. Since completing her studies she has performed with Toshiko Akiyoshi, Rufus Reid, Mark Nightingale, Lee “Scratch” Perry, the London Jazz Orchestra, and numerous additional artists.

Alhaan al Siduri, a suite she developed with support from Birmingham Jazzlines, received its premiere in October 2015 at the city’s CBSO Centre. The work drew on folk melodies of Bahraini pearl divers and women’s traditional wedding songs. Its second performance marked Ahmed’s first appearance in her birthplace, at the Bahrain International Music Festival in 2016.

Also in 2015, South Bank Centre’s Tomorrow’s Warriors consultancy, backed by PRS Women Make Music, commissioned her to write a suite honoring courageous and influential women; Polyhymnia was first presented by the all-female Nu Civilisation Orchestra at the WOW! Festival on International Women’s Day in March 2015.

During 2016 Ahmed served as an LSO Soundhub composer, an appointment that allowed her to develop writing for her newly created quarter-tone flügelhorn. The distinctive instrument enables her to approach the modal “blues notes” central to Arabic music and thereby embed her heritage more deeply in her sound. Her second album, La Saboteuse—issued by Naim Records in 2017 and featuring cover artwork by Bristol-based illustrator Sophie Bass—received strong critical notice, appeared on numerous year-end lists worldwide, was named Jazz Album of the Year by The Wire, and reached the Top 20 of Bandcamp’s overall Top 100 albums for that year.

The Ligeti Quartet commissioned Ahmed to compose for The Planets 2018, a project conceived for planetarium tours marking both modern astronomy and the centenary of Gustav Holst’s suite. Her piece Saturn was performed at multiple U.K. venues in October. She also received a commission from the Open University for a solo work inspired by the moon, which was presented at the OU Moon Night in December. In 2018 she joined Arturo O’Farrill’s Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra as guest soloist and composer. La Saboteuse Remixed appeared in August and included collaborations with three prominent European electronic DJs—Hector Plimmer, DJ Khalab, and Blacksea Não Maya. In October 2019 Ahmed issued a studio recording of Polyhymnia (again featuring cover art by Bass) that paid tribute to notable women in history: Rosa Parks, Malala Yousafzai, Ruby Bridges, and Barbara Thompson. Its first single, “Lahan al-Mansour,” honors Saudi Arabia’s first female film director, Haifaa Al-Mansour.