Ibrahim Maalouf: Trumpets of Michel Ange
Author: Nick Hasted
View record and artist detailsRecord and Artist Details
Musicians: |
Nizar Ali (t) |
Label: |
Mister IBE |
Magazine Review Date: |
October/2024 |
Media Format: |
CD, LP, DL |
Catalogue Number: |
IBM42 |
RecordDate: |
Rec. date not stated |
Maalouf was a Francophone phenomenon even before Quincy Jones’ regal blessing and a Grammy-nominated album with Angélique Kidjo, drawing on his Lebanese heritage and instinct for integration to become a beloved public figure, helping to salve the wounds of war and collaborating with rock and rap stars, as well as Jon Batiste and Wynton Marsalis.
His 15th album is a raw, immediate manifesto for the quarter-tone trumpet, an instrument invented by his father Nassim Maalouf, a renowned classical trumpeter who added a fourth valve to allow Arabic maqamat (improvised melodic modes), slipping half-sharps and flats between Western scales. Ibrahim has popularised Nassim's creation, and here leads a battery of the instruments in often exultant call and response, bolstered by star guests Trombone Shorty and the late kora master Toumani Diabaté.
Trumpets of Michel Ange follows the trajectory of a love affair, marriage and parenthood, beginning with the carnivalesque ‘The Proposal’. ‘Zajal’ follows and is more explosive, massed quarter-tone trumpets seething and jostling as if in a crowded square, Arabic notes allowing the instrument a less fixed character, an inbetween state, as the musicians chant and exhort.
‘Stranger’, inspired by Nassim's flight from the Lebanese Civil War into French exile, sees Ibrahim solo in lachrymose mourning faintly suggesting Miles’ Sketches of Spain, building through introspective vibrato into grander romantic flourishes and the band's climbing, climactic dance, which Maalouf concludes, wrung out. Julien Tekeyan's tumbling drums and Arabic percussion and Mohamed Derouich's acoustic guitar are crucial, as are Sidiki and Toumani Diabaté's harp-like, rippling koras on the concluding ‘Timeless’. It's an impassioned coronation of an instrument which embodies the inclusive refugee accomplishment of Maalouf pére et fils.
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