Inner Spaces is a duo project from trumpeter-composer Amir ElSaffar and sound artist Lorenzo Bianchi Hoesch — two artists for whom microtone is mother tongue and silence is material. ElSaffar moves between trumpet, voice, and santur, drawing on the Iraqi maqam tradition alongside the language of contemporary jazz. Bianchi Hoesch surrounds and transforms this acoustic presence with live electronics, building immersive sonic environments in real time. Together they have developed a modular, collaborative form that weaves electroacoustic landscapes, maqam, microtonal harmony, and open improvisation into a continuous, breathing whole. Their album Inner Spaces (Maqam Records / Ornithology Productions) has received four-star praise from DownBeat, Songlines, and Jazz Journal, with reviewers describing a music that is at once "spiritually ancient" and rigorously forward-looking — a "sonic laboratory" and a "mercurial slice of ambient jazz" rooted in a shared Iraqi maqam. In concert, the duo extends the recorded work outward: the room becomes part of the instrument, and each performance finds its own shape through flexible structures and improvisatory space. This is music that does not move quickly. It asks to be inhabited — heard with the full body, not just the ears.
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Inner Spaces is produced by Face Foundation, PS21 Chatham, Pioneer Works Brooklyn, and Ornithology Productions.
// Event Photo Credit: © Triennale Milano. Foto di Lorenza Daverio.
This is a seated performance. If you require accessibility accommodations, please email boxoffice@nationalsawdust.org.
// Presented with the support of Villa Albertine Residency Program and Albertine Foundation.
About Villa Albertine, the French Institute for Culture and Education
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Villa Albertine is an institution of the French Embassy in the United States, supported by the French government and Albertine Foundation. Villa Albertine’s mission is to strengthen ties between the United States, France and the French-speaking world through culture and education.
In the arts and culture sphere, we encourage collaboration among French and US-based organizations and provide creators, thought leaders, and professionals with customized residencies, immersive networking experiences, grants, and connections to audiences so they can explore and share new insights into society’s pressing issues.
In the field of education, we craft projects and programs aimed at making French language and culture accessible to young US-based audiences, expand opportunities for students to study and complete internships in France, and support partnerships between French and American higher education and research institutions.
Villa Albertine is present in 10 major US cities –– Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles, Miami, New York, New Orleans, San Francisco, and Washington, DC –– and publishes an annual magazine, States. It is headquartered in New York’s historic Payne Whitney mansion, home to Albertine, our bookshop and nexus for French-American intellectual exchange.
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ABOUT AMIR ELSAFFAR
Amir ElSaffar is a composer, trumpeter, santur player, and vocalist described as "uniquely positioned to reconcile jazz and Arabic music" (The Wire) and "one of the most promising figures in jazz today" (Chicago Tribune). A recipient of the Doris Duke Performing Artist Award and a US Artists Fellow (2018), ElSaffar is a classically trained trumpet virtuoso who has developed original techniques for performing the microtones and idiomatic ornaments of Arabic music — sounds rarely heard on the instrument. He is also a living practitioner of the Iraqi maqam tradition — an ancient and increasingly endangered art — which he performs as both singer and santur player. As a composer, ElSaffar has drawn on the subtle microtonality of Iraqi maqam to forge an innovative approach to harmony and melody, receiving commissions for large and small jazz ensembles, Middle Eastern traditional ensembles, chamber orchestras, string quartets, contemporary music ensembles, and dance companies.
ABOUT LORENZO BIANCHI HOESCH
Lorenzo Bianchi Hoesch is a Paris-based composer and sound artist whose work spans electroacoustic composition, theater, dance, interactive installations, and spatial audio. At the core of his practice is a sustained interest in forging new connections between otherwise distant worlds — musical, cultural, and sonic. His collaborations outside Western aesthetics (with artists including Ballaké Sissoko and Amir ElSaffar), his immersive sound installations (Square for Ircam–Centre Pompidou; Atolls for Musée du Quai Branly, Paris), and his work with choreographers and directors (Adolphe Binder, Michele di Stefano, Richard Siegal, Stijn Celis) all reflect a compositional practice where spatial sound and physical movement are inseparable. A significant portion of his output is dedicated to 3D audio, multichannel composition, and holophonic sound design. He has received commissions from Ircam–Centre Pompidou, GRM, the Venice Biennale, Opéra de Göteborg, Musée du Quai Branly, Opéra de Sarrebruck, Ballet National de Marseille, RuhrTriennale, Fondation Royaumont, Fondation Haydn, and Face Foundation, among others. He is an associated artist at Ircam–Centre Pompidou and teaches Electroacoustic Composition at the Conservatoire de Montbéliard. He founded Ornithology Productions in 2022.