Ahmed Warshanna’s “Ishta” – more than just “Cool”
On Saturday June 7th, I heard Ahmed Warshanna’s remarkable sextet, “Ishta,” at Backwater Books in Ellicott City. Warshanna is a guitarist, composer, and arranger based in Baltimore. A graduate of UMBC and recipient of the 2020 Music Achievement Award, he creates a unique style blending jazz with music from his Egyptian roots, as well as Afro Cuban, bebop, post-bop, hip hop, avant-garde, rock, Americana, blues, and more.
Warshanna has performed with a range of Baltimore jazz luminaries, including Brandon Woody, Allison Miller, Clarence Ward III, Ted Baker, Ephraim Dorsey, Obasi Akoto, Elijah Jamal Balbed, Jo Palmer, Justin Mendez, and Ryan Hanseler. This night, his sextet included Justin Mendez (alto), Jack Nelson (tenor), Chris Law (bass), Ricky Jefferson (keys), and Kevin Kearney (drums). He generally plays with a sextet but rotates the personnel, saying “it keeps the music alive, exploratory, and never stale.”
Warshanna tells the story of how he came to choose the name “Ishta” for his band. An artist friend created a painting of a scene described by Warshanna, of a man walking through the Sahara Desert in the dead of night, with no end in sight, guided only by the light of the moon. That scene captured how he was feeling about life at the time. He showed it to his mother, saying that it would be the cover for his debut album. The first thing she said was: “إذا قشطة,” which literally means “cream” but loosely translates to “What’s this? Coooool!” in Egyptian Arabic. It’s the kind of feeling he aims to produce with his music—a sense of “Oh, wow, this is really cool.” It was, he says, “a small but meaningful way to honor both my heritage and my mom.”
My own reaction to the music was something more intense than “Oh, cooool!” All of the pieces they performed were Warshanna’s originals. The compositions were richly textured; melodically, rhythmically, and harmonically unconventional; and densely orchestrated, and created a powerful emotional impact. I often heard distinct traces of the Egyptian influence. All band members were keenly attuned to one another and to what they were contributing to the overall effect. It was like they had rehearsed or something….
Warshanna has this to say about his work: “My compositions come from a deeply personal place, shaped by my upbringing as the child of Egyptian immigrants (my parents are from Alexandria) and my life growing up here in the U.S. That push and pull between heritage and environment has always fueled my music.” He incorporates Frank Sinatra and Umm Kulthum, Beatles and Abdel Halim Hafez, Michael Jackson and Mohamed Abdel Wahab –all music he heard in his home growing up—music, he says, “that was part of my mom’s youth in Egypt…[that] found its way into my ears and heart. I feel really lucky to be surrounded by so many sounds in this country and to draw inspiration from it all.”
Warshanna’s website includes several glowing reviews of his album, Ishta, from The Sentinel, Audiophile, and Midwest Record; I also found this by Marc Phillips on The Vinyl Anachronist, invoking the “exotic” quality of the Duke Ellington jazz standard “Caravan” and saying that “[Warshanna knows] how to play straightforward jazz and infuse just enough of those Middle Eastern influences to deliver those same goose bumps, that same sense of the universal appeal of jazz.” This is music that creates a unique experience in sound, venturing beyond the familiar into the terrain of intellect, emotion, and imagination.
Backwater Books, an arty venue at 8156 Main Street in historic Old Ellicott City, regularly hosts live music in an upstairs space with white-painted brick walls adorned with paintings and prints. There is a small lounge and bar at the rear of the performance area, which is flanked by shelves of books and small, cozy seating areas. On past visits, I have found an animated bar scene enlivened by a background of jazz; on this occasion, I found mostly young listeners seated in respectful silence in rows of chairs facing the band, while patrons at the rear bar and lounge mostly kept their conversations muted.
Warshanna actually started playing in that space when it was a cigar shop. When that business went defunct, Matt and Alli Krist took it over in 2022 and transformed it into a bookstore. Warshanna approached them and proposed the idea of a regular music series–which became Backwater Sessions. Since then, he has played there every Saturday, and he says, “it’s grown into a cozy, community-driven staple of the local scene.” Warshanna will continue to perform on the first Saturday of the month at Backwater Books. Their events calendar lists an eclectic variety of other performances.
At this writing, Warshanna says he has a number of other performances in the works for his band; he is performing at Café Mezzanotte in Severna Park, and at Maryland Hall on August 30th as part of their 2025–2026 season. He will be heading to Peabody Institute in fall to begin a master’s degree program. He is currently working on his second album (and seeking help with funds through GoFundMe; check his Facebook page). Videos of his playing can be found on his YouTube site. He has also been making Tik-Tok and Facebook posts of himself playing for a raccoon living in a tree in his backyard—which he says is sometimes more fun than playing for people. I’m hoping that he does keep playing for people and am looking forward to hearing more of him in Baltimore. His album can be purchased on Amazon, Bandcamp, and Spotify.
–Liz Fixsen. (Liz is a small-time jazz vocalist and keyboardist and a big-time jazz fan, a familiar presence at jazz venues all over Baltimore. She serves on the board of the Baltimore Jazz Alliance and edits and writes for the quarterly newsletter. In her other life, she teaches ESL with Project Literacy of the Howard County Library and takes care of two oddball male human beings and a feisty cat in her home in Savage.)