The Maydan Ensemble of the North London Jazz Collective

The Maydan Ensemble of the North London Jazz Collective is a quintet that blends modern jazz with Arabic, Anatolian and Persian folk music.

Having formed at the start of 2025, they have wowed audiences, selling out multiple venues across UK and beyond, including Palestine House and the Green Note, as well as recently headlining Zoot Fest in Pairs, and Zeman World Music Festival in Serbia.

They are a fully international group comprising some of London’s busiest jazz musicians in a unique setting:

• From Egypt, the rising-star vocalist Amena • Acclaimed Irish-Iranian jazz guitarist Kourosh Kanani • Italian-English bassist and stalwart of the London jazz scene Lorenzo Morabito (Giacomo Smith, Peter Horsfall, Mark Kavuma etc); • Londoner and co-founder of the NLJC, Robbie Ellison on drums.

The group explores the intersection of jazz and a bricolage of Middle Eastern musical traditions from two perspectives: that of material from the jazz canon inspired by West Asia; and that of the group's own jazz-flavoured arrangements and renditions of Arabic, Anatolian and Persian folk tunes.

’Maydan’ means ‘town square’ or ‘public meeting-place’. Originating in Farsi, the word now finds usage in Arabic, Turkish, Urdu, Georgian and Ukrainian. In taking this name, the group recognises first and foremost that diverse musical traditions find commonality by their grounding in communal life and social practice, while embracing the subversive political potential of music as a collective, convivial act.