FourOneOne is proud to present the UK, Sweden, and France-based أحمد [Ahmed] for a three-day residency in New York.
أحمد [Ahmed] is a jazz quartet conceptually grounded in the life of Ahmed Abdul-Malik, the visionary 20th-century New York City bassist, oudist, composer, educator and philosopher. While their approach does include playing compositions written by Abdul-Malik, أحمد [Ahmed] is no repertory band. The group—pianist Pat Thomas and saxophonist Seymour Wright, both from the UK, Swedish double bassist Joel Grip and French drummer Antonin Gerbal—consider themselves improvisers first, using Abdul-Malik’s thematic material as jumping off points for radical extrapolations. Together they explore, in Wright’s words, the “aggregate awkward wealth” of Ahmed’s traces, including his recordings, teachings, writings, ethics, and practices of experimentation.
As evidenced by albums like Giant Beauty, the 5-CD concert recording that won them WIRE album of the year in 2024, أحمد [Ahmed] is very much a live act. The intensity and physicality of their sets characterizes a sound that is completely their own. Their performances frequently feature the relentless, high energy repetition of short phrases that change almost imperceptibly over time, creating vast sonic matrices out of minimal musical material. There are traces of Roscoe Mitchell’s Nonaah here, and influences of European “free improvisation,” but also the intervallic invention of Monk (a 2-CD collection of Monk tunes is forthcoming), and the irrepressible dance of the calypso of Thomas’ and Abdul-Malik’s shared Caribbean roots. Each member of the band has their own relationship to their namesakes’ music. Wright and Thomas discussed Abdul-Malik for years before the founding of the group. Grip absorbed his bass playing "unconsciously" as a teenager via classic Monk quartet records. An impressionable young Gerbal marvelled at the rhythm section of Abdul-Malik and drummer Roy Haynes on those same albums.
Emerging from the bebop era of the 1940s, Ahmed Abdul-Malik developed a vital, forward-looking body of music fusing Arabic, East African, and Caribbean music with then-current developments in American jazz. Despite his presence as a notable sideman on records by Thelonius Monk, Art Blakey, Randy Weston, and John Coltrane, and influence on subsequent generations of jazz artists’ engagement with traditions from around the globe, Abdul-Malik’s visionary work remains underrecognized. Through their own improvisatory practices, and inspired by him, أحمد [Ahmed] inhabit, question, and evolve the transatlantic resonances between his time and place and theirs, and bring forth a physical, rooted, ecstatic music.
