About eight kilometres north of central Paris lies the elegant suburb of Enghien-les-Bains, which has, for the past twenty five years, hosted an annual jazz festival across its various cultural venues (including Europe’s largest floating stage). This year’s festival opened with a sold-out show from the twice-Grammy nominated trumpeter, composer and producer Ibrahim Maalouf, born in Lebanon and raised in France. Maalouf’s musical predilections have expanded far beyond his classical roots, embracing jazz, soul, hip hop and rock, each musical palette infused with the tonal flavours of his Middle Eastern heritage. His versatility has led to collaborations with a remarkably wide range of artists from Wynton Marsalis to A$AP Rocky, Angelique Kidjo to Sting. For this show (part of a wider tour), he assembled a talented cast of musicians to perform his latest project, the ‘Trumpets of Michel-Ange’ (released in 2024 as his eighteenth studio album). His set was prefaced by a number of jazz-pop compositions by the singer and bassist Julia Richard, whose sensitive, crystal-clear vocals glided smoothly over funky grooves.
The Theatre du Casino Barrière Enghien-les-Bains, with a capacity below 700 seats, offered an intimate stage for Maalouf’s rambunctious affair, a far cry from the stadiums in which he is now accustomed to perform. In fact, the venue’s size was perfectly suited to the atmosphere that Maalouf wished to foster. The show, as he told us from the stage, was devoted to themes of unity and human connection—a celebration of music’s ability to cultivate a powerful sense of communality. Without the barrier of scale, we as listeners felt more directly connected to both the performers and to each other. Maalouf led us through an unfolding love story, which began with a marriage proposal (‘The Proposal’ being the title of the first composition, a piece inspired by music from Maalouf’s own wedding). We were then thrown into the revelry of wedding celebrations (‘Love Anthem’, ‘Fly With Me’), before turning to the joys of married life and parenthood (‘The Smile of Rita’, ‘Zajal’, ‘Capitals’). The set ended with the poignant ‘Au Revoir’, which marked the moment when the married couple’s offspring fly the nest. The message of cross-generational transmission was brought to the fore for this finale when some of France’s next generation of trumpet players emerged onto the stage to bolster the melodic forces.
The flamboyant brass-band sound of Maalouf’s core team of six trumpeters has a jubilance that resonates across the musical universe, from New Orleans jazz to Latin genres and Middle Eastern festive music. The sonority was, of course, particularly fitting for nuptial celebrations. As the wedding’s ‘celebrant’, Maalouf had the audience on their feet dancing, swaying to the bossa nova flair of ‘Fly With Me’, and the brassy party anthem ‘Capitals’. ‘We’re here to get married!’, he exclaimed. His indefatigable energy rippled through the musicians on stage, who danced along and effectively choreographed the numerous moments of call-and-response with Maalouf. At certain points, the musicians were joined on stage by the dancer Hafsatou Saindou, who shimmied and twirled with infectious vigour. Frequent intricate solos from Maalouf and saxophonist Mihai Pîrvan (an extraordinarily expressive player) punctuated proceedings, allowing us the opportunity to fully appreciate their instrumental brilliance. Crisp tempo changes (‘Love Anthem’, ‘Zajal’) reinforced the palpable sense of musical playfulness that ran through the set.
The stand-out performances were those works (‘The Proposal’, ‘Zajal’) that drew most assertively on the musical idiosyncrasies of the trompette arabe:the quarter-tone trumpet, played by all the trumpeters on stage. Through his T.O.M.A enterprise, Maalouf is on a mission to popularise the instrument, an invention of his father Nassim Maalouf. The elder Maalouf realised that adding a fourth valve to a standard trumpet would enable the player to embrace maqam (the modal melodic system used in Arabic music). He began developing this new trumpet while working as a sacristan at one of Paris’s oldest churches Saint-Julien-le-Pauvre, having arrived there from Lebanon in the ’60s. The ‘Michel-Ange’ in the project’s title is a reference to Nassim, whom his son idolised in his youth as a kind of ‘Michelangelo’ of the trumpet—industriously working in his chapel just as the Renaissance master had.
Once the ear begins to familiarise itself with those microtonal intervals that fall between the keys of a Western piano, a delicious expressiveness opens up. ‘Zajal’, which takes its name from an Arabic poetic contest based on improvised, rhythmic verse, is a case in point. The subtle inflections and pitch bends of the trumpet mimic the nuances of Arabic vocalists and traditional instruments (such as the oud), but in a particularly bold, celebratory manner befitting of the song’s symbolism within the project.
At the end of the concert I caught the warm and friendly Maalouf backstage briefly. ‘Did you dance?’, he asked, out of curiosity. ‘Of course! Everyone did’, I replied. It was impossible not to.
BAND
Ibrahim Maalouf: Lead Trumpet
Mihai Pîrvan: Saxophone
François Delporte: Electric guitar
Mohamed Derouich: Bass Guitar
Julien Tekeyan: Drums
Hafsatou Saindou: Dancer
Yanis Belaïd: Trumpet
Yvan Djaouti: Trumpet
Nizar Ali: Trumpet
Manel Girard: Trumpet
Diwan Fortecoëf: Trumpet
Rita Haykal: Trumpet
Ibrahim Maalouf is performing with Pakistani-American vocalist Arooj Aftab and the BBC Symphony Orchestra as part of the BBC Proms on 29 July 2025: https://www.bbc.co.uk/events/ecc2rz
