Ibrahim Maalouf

Ibrahim Maalouf, born in Beirut in 1980, is not only one of the most versatile musicians in France, but also one of the most successful. Having just come of age, the trumpeter won 15 music competitions in just four years. He began teaching at universities at the age of 26. His father, a pupil of Maurice André, played a decisive role in all of this. He developed the quarter-tone trumpet named after him, which is equipped with an additional valve and makes it possible to play notes that lie outside the 12-tone scale. Naturally, Maalouf also uses this instrument in his large-scale project "Trumpets of Michel-Ange", a brilliant musical bridge between jazz, rock, African rhythms and Arabic folklore. The title is a tribute to his father: "As a child, I always imagined him as Michelangelo painting the Sistine Chapel. For me, he was simply a genius," the French-Lebanese musician told the magazine "Sound of Life". Despite the rousing power that characterizes Ibrahim Maalouf's concerts, his magical sound, which the critic Josef Engels aptly describes as "tears of liquid metal", stands above everything else.