Mohamed Najem - Jaffa Blossom (2024)

Inspired by numerous travels, Mohamed Najem's music offers a unique approach where the jazz aesthetic is nourished by purely oriental influences. Led by the composer and clarinetist from Bethlehem, the quartet moves effortlessly from one shore to the other, transforming Middle Eastern music into a new language.

While adopting a typically jazz instrumentation (the quartet with piano-double bass-drums rhythm), Mohamed Najem, clarinetist born in Palestine, is at the crossroads of three musical and instrumental cultures: jazz, classical music and oriental music. Inspired by the stories told to him by his grandfather, born in Jaffa (“the bride of the sea and the city of oranges”), Mohamed draws from his travels and his memory the richness of his colorful melodies. He thus creates, beyond styles, a new musical language, nourished by oriental and contemporary accents.

Created in 2016, this ensemble has participated in numerous festivals in France, and as far away as the French Institute of Gabon, during the week of classical music and jazz, and in Qatar, during the Katara European Jazz Festival . In June 2017, the quartet was one of six groups competing in the most important jazz competition in France, the Concours national de jazz de la Défense. He toured the UK in July 2017, visiting London, Manchester, Leeds, Birmingham and Edinburgh, and played at the Ora Jazz Festival in Romania, the Multiphonics Festival in Germany, and recently at Unesco, in Paris.