Trumpet and Flugelhorn | b. 1983

Yazz Ahmed was born Yasmeen Ahmed in London in 1983 to a British ballerina mother and a Bahraini engineer father. The family moved to Bahrain after her birth; she returned to London at nine when her parents separated, chose the trumpet at her new school because her maternal grandfather Terry Brown had played it in jazz bands in the 1950s, and spent the following years working toward a master's degree from the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. Her early career included session and live work with Radiohead and These New Puritans before her 2011 debut "Finding My Way Home" introduced the Arabic and jazz fusion approach she has developed ever since. "La Saboteuse" (Naim, 2017), built around her working septet the Family Hafla and featuring Shabaka Hutchings, named The Wire's Jazz Album of the Year and placed her at the centre of the London jazz scene's international moment. During 2016 she developed a bespoke quarter-tone flugelhorn enabling closer access to the modal blue notes of Arabic music, worked as an LSO Soundhub composer, and began developing "Polyhymnia" (Ropeadope, 2019), a suite for twenty-five musicians dedicated to courageous women, including Rosa Parks, Malala Yousafzai and Haifaa al-Mansour, which won the Jazz FM Album of the Year and an Ivor Novello Award for Innovation. She has since been commissioned by Blue Note Records and premiered work at the Bahrain International Music Festival. Her 2025 album "A Paradise in the Hold" is her most personal statement, drawing on Bahraini pearl diver folk music and wedding songs and introducing voice for the first time. Ahmed remains active and based in London.