Yazz Ahmed

Yazz Ahmed is a jazz trumpeter and composer whose music draws a lot of inspiration from Middle Eastern traditions both harmonically and rhythmically, no doubt related to the fact that she spent plenty of her childhood years in Bahrain. She is a versatile composer and a terrific instrumentalist who hits the additional notes in the Arabic scale with her quarter tone flugelhorn. On the western side, she works mostly in the post-bop style though she sometimes also expands into the classic '70s fusion as well as some of the modern beats. That said, the defining characteristic of her sound has to be the way she deftly, and organically, weaves Middle Eastern tones and melodies into the fabric of her jazz with full command of the idioms used in both worlds.