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.
[Ahmed] make music about the music of Ahmed Abdul-Malik. They excavate, re-inhabit and use a-new the now overlooked documents, and fragmentary plans, of his mid-20th century synthetic vision to produce a new jazz imagination for the 21st century.
Pat Thomas studied classical piano from aged 8 and started playing Jazz from the age of 16. He has since gone on to develop an utterly unique style - embracing improvisation, jazz and new music. He has played with Derek Bailey in Company Week (1990/91) and in the trio AND (with Noble) – with Tony Oxley’s Quartet and Celebration Orchestra and in Duo with Lol Coxhill.
"Thomas belongs to the school of jazz pianism that proceeds from Ellington through Monk, Elmo Hope, Herbie Nichols and Andrew Hill, splintering off via Cecil Taylor to Alex von Schlippenbach, Misha Mengelberg and Alexander Hawkins. He’s a player of great intellectual weight but also of emotional power" – Richard Williams, The Blue Moment
"Deconstructing and reconstructing as part of the interpretative process is second nature to Thomas. The obvious is kept at his arm’s length so from tangential start points, unforgettable melodies would creep back to plant flags firmly in the ground." – London Jazz News
Antonin Gerbal is a percussion player, improviser and composer, active in the field of contemporary musics – from jazz to non-idiomatic languages. He has studied music at Paris Conservatory and philosophy at EHESS. In 2009 he co-founded Umlaut France, an organization which runs the eponymous label and organizes concerts and festivals in Paris and Berlin. Antonin Gerbal is mainly using percussion elements to develop multiple accesses to musical languages in jazz, improvised or written music. He has collaborated with many international artists and played in United States, Japan, Russia and Europe.