Maqam

Elsewhere in the evening the young Iraqi-American trumpeter Amir ElSaffar, who has studied both jazz and traditional Arabic maqam patterns and combines them in modal pieces for improvisers, demonstrated with his sextet (including an oud and a santoor, the Persian hammered dulcimer) how hungry jazz still is for sources older than itself.

At 18, late for a professional musician, he took up the oud, studying the mysteries of the Iraqi maqam, the complex system of tonal sequences and improvisation passed from master to student.

But he hesitated when approached to do a project that combined maqam with jazz, even though that had been his pre-quest intention.