Innovation

Yazz Ahmed

Bringing things together, in the music of trumpeter and composer Yazz Ahmed, is not a path to closing off perspectives, but a way to open them out. Ahmed studied jazz and classical music at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, but it wasn’t until she began to explore her Arabic roots (her father is Bahraini, and she lived in Bahrain until she was nine) that she found a voice that she could call her own. This journey of discovery is reflected in her first album, Finding My Way Home (2011), a psychedelic blend of Arabic song, North African drumming and Miles Davis cool, and on 2017’s La Saboteuse she grappled still further with her inner creative demons, earning rave reviews including The Wire’s jazz album of the year. But it was the concert suite Polyhymnia, commissioned by Tomorrow’s Warriors and PRS Women Make Music (performed in 2015 and recorded last year), that drew Ahmed to extend her horizons to the lives of great women from history, from Rosa Parks to British jazz pioneer Barbara Thompson. Ahmed’s music reflects this opening out, drawing in new influences from New Orleans marching bands to ‘Men of Harlech’ (as adapted by the Suffragettes), as well as many new musical collaborators.

Ahmed has continued to explore and expand upon her heritage, spending a year in 2016 working with the London Symphony Orchestra as part of its Soundhub scheme for young composers, and in 2018 composing a movement (Saturn) for the Ligeti Quartet’s The Planets 2018 project, as well as performing with the Lebanese-American pianist Tarek Amani, the Algerian singer Amel Zen and the British composer Susheela Raman. Further still, both La Saboteuse and Polyhymnia have been given remix reincarnations by an international array of DJs and producers. Ahmed’s softly keening playing has also appeared prominently on records by Radiohead, These New Puritans and Transglobal Underground. She plays a quarter-tone flugelhorn, specially commissioned to allow her to insert Arabic scales within the spaces of European jazz and classical music.

Innovation in composition comes in many forms and this award recognises trailblazers and inventive music creators who are truly unique talents. For opening out musical perspectives, this year it recognises Yazz Ahmed.

TIM RUTHERFORD-JOHNSON