IBRAHIM MAALOUF

World Fusion / Jazz Related Soundtracks / Third Stream / Pop/Art Song/Folk / Jazz Related Electronica/Hip-Hop / Fusion / Eclectic Fusion • Lebanon
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A pioneering figure in the world of contemporary jazz thanks to his fusion of pop, soul, electro, hip-hop, and French chansons with the music of his Lebanese roots, Ibrahim Maalouf is widely regarded as one of the most gifted trumpeters of his generation. Born in Beirut in 1980 to a pianist mother and famous trumpeter father, Nassim, he fled to the suburbs of Paris with his family from a young age during the midst of the Lebanon civil war. Inspired by his parents' musical background, he began studying the trumpet and classical Arab music from the age of seven, and as a teen, often performed the works of Vivaldi, Purcell and Albinoni alongside his father across Europe and the Middle East. Following a well-received interpretation of Bach's 2nd Brandenburg Concerto, often considered one of the most difficult pieces in the classical trumpet repertoire, he was encouraged by French trumpeter Maurice read more...
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IBRAHIM MAALOUF Discography

IBRAHIM MAALOUF albums / top albums

IBRAHIM MAALOUF Diasporas album cover 0.00 | 0 ratings
Diasporas
World Fusion 2007
IBRAHIM MAALOUF Diachronism album cover 4.00 | 1 ratings
Diachronism
World Fusion 2009
IBRAHIM MAALOUF Diagnostic album cover 4.00 | 1 ratings
Diagnostic
World Fusion 2011
IBRAHIM MAALOUF Wind album cover 4.00 | 2 ratings
Wind
World Fusion 2012
IBRAHIM MAALOUF Illusions album cover 4.45 | 2 ratings
Illusions
Fusion 2013
IBRAHIM MAALOUF Yves Saint Laurent (Soundtrack) album cover 0.00 | 0 ratings
Yves Saint Laurent (Soundtrack)
Jazz Related Soundtracks 2014
IBRAHIM MAALOUF Ibrahim Maalouf & Oxmo Puccino : Au Pays d'Alice album cover 3.00 | 1 ratings
Ibrahim Maalouf & Oxmo Puccino : Au Pays d'Alice
Eclectic Fusion 2014
IBRAHIM MAALOUF Red & Black Light album cover 4.00 | 3 ratings
Red & Black Light
World Fusion 2015
IBRAHIM MAALOUF Kalthoum album cover 4.00 | 1 ratings
Kalthoum
World Fusion 2015
IBRAHIM MAALOUF Ibrahim Maalouf - Je vous souhaite d’être follement aimée (Bande Originale du Film) album cover 0.00 | 0 ratings
Ibrahim Maalouf - Je vous souhaite d’être follement aimée (Bande Originale du Film)
Jazz Related Soundtracks 2016
IBRAHIM MAALOUF Dans Les Forets De Siberie album cover 0.00 | 0 ratings
Dans Les Forets De Siberie
Jazz Related Soundtracks 2016
IBRAHIM MAALOUF La vache album cover 0.00 | 0 ratings
La vache
Jazz Related Soundtracks 2016
IBRAHIM MAALOUF Dalida By Ibrahim Maalouf album cover 0.00 | 0 ratings
Dalida By Ibrahim Maalouf
Pop/Art Song/Folk 2017
IBRAHIM MAALOUF Levantine Symphony N°1 album cover 4.50 | 1 ratings
Levantine Symphony N°1
Third Stream 2018
IBRAHIM MAALOUF S3ns album cover 3.50 | 1 ratings
S3ns
World Fusion 2019
IBRAHIM MAALOUF 40 Melodies album cover 3.50 | 1 ratings
40 Melodies
World Fusion 2020
IBRAHIM MAALOUF Capacity to Love album cover 0.00 | 0 ratings
Capacity to Love
Jazz Related Electronica/Hip-Hop 2022
IBRAHIM MAALOUF Trumpets of Michel-Ange album cover 0.00 | 0 ratings
Trumpets of Michel-Ange
World Fusion 2024

IBRAHIM MAALOUF EPs & splits

IBRAHIM MAALOUF live albums

IBRAHIM MAALOUF 10 Ans de Live! album cover 0.00 | 0 ratings
10 Ans de Live!
World Fusion 2016
IBRAHIM MAALOUF 14.12.16 - Live in Paris album cover 0.00 | 0 ratings
14.12.16 - Live in Paris
World Fusion 2018
IBRAHIM MAALOUF Paris In Love album cover 0.00 | 0 ratings
Paris In Love
World Fusion 2024

IBRAHIM MAALOUF demos, promos, fans club and other releases (no bootlegs)

IBRAHIM MAALOUF re-issues & compilations

IBRAHIM MAALOUF Ibrahim Maalouf album cover 0.00 | 0 ratings
Ibrahim Maalouf
World Fusion 2012
IBRAHIM MAALOUF Dia album cover 0.00 | 0 ratings
Dia
World Fusion 2013

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IBRAHIM MAALOUF movies (DVD, Blu-Ray or VHS)

IBRAHIM MAALOUF Reviews

IBRAHIM MAALOUF Illusions

Album · 2013 · Fusion
Cover art Buy this album from MMA partners
Sean Trane
As with his predecessor Wind, Maalouf decides to continue to explore away from his trad Arab-jazz music he had developed on his first three “Dia” album (Diaspora, Diagnostics and Diawhatever), and indeed Illusions is yet another totally different departure from his “usual stuff”. If his preceding Wind album was a mix of trad jazz and fusion, Illusions is a much rockier affair, somewhere between JR/F and progressive rock and even nearing metal music at times. Recorded in the greater Paris, with a mix of French and Belgiabn musicians ‘Woeste and Delporte) and a trio of trumpet players to accompany his flugelhorn, Ibrahim chose once more for vintage instruments in the KB department. Released under the same kind of single-disc boxset as Wind had been, with a bunch of photos, lengthy liner bilingual notes that don’t reallt shed much light on the compositions (IMHO, of course) and a “digibook” casing inside (with that foam stud in the middle, one can only wonder at the utility of these extra costly features, despite the excellence of the album.

Opening on an almost Post-rock title-track piece with the usual gradual build-up crescendo, it segues directly in the wild and dramatic 8-mins+ Conspiracy Generation, where the fantastic trumpets add plenty of suspense and intensity behind Delporte’s wild electric rock guitar. You could almost believe this was a modern progressive rock album, with constant tempo changes, tricky time sigs, plenty of moods developed. Breathtaking if you’re a rock fan, probably not nearly as much if you’re a jazz-buff and early Maalouf discography addict. The following InPressi enters a trilogy of tracks where three or four ideas are exploited multiple times, mixed, shredded, torn apart and glued back for utmost excitement (and a few goosebumps along the way): the joyful and exuberant call & response between Maalouf and the trumpet section, the three descending notes, and more.

Nomade (No Man’s Land) Slang reprises the theme and takes it to yet another level of excitement and jubilation, only to end inexpectedly calmly… But despair not, because the following 10-mins+ Busy composition exploits the three descending notes again and hovers solemnly around for a while, slowly crescendoing into the chaotic dissonance halfway through, then reverting to the slow start thing. You can clearly hear Maalouf’s “Arabitude” in his interventions, though the title of “lead trumpet” falls onto Yann Martin’s horn. Woeste’s Rhodes opens the funky fusion piece Be A Woman , but once the horn come back, the fantastic theme is again reprised and accommodated with bass and drums glory moments and other solos, but we’re nearing the overdose and the “déjà-entendu” but the riffs are hugely dramatic and overpowering. Unfaitful is actually fairly faithful to its predecessors and tends to redeploy once more the themes and ideas exploited in the four previous tracks, this time almost overstaying their welcome.

The album ends in a very WTF manner with a late-70’s type of AOR track ala Toto or Foreigner with FM-rock vocals that kind of ruins an otherwise perfect album. The lyrics allude to Be A Woman, but this doesn’t make it a True Story. Maybe if there was a tad more guitars, you could think of a Jeff Beck and Rod Stewart collab in 75 or something of that ilk. Outside that obviously ill-advised inclusion (the track in itself is ok, but just not fitting the rest of the album); Illusions is clearly Maalouf’s best and most consistant album, and definitely of one the best surprise of 2013. But to be honest, just like for Wind, the cardboard “Digibook” format casing would’ve been plenty enough, instead of this luxurious (and ultimately bombastic) package. Let this not ruin my overall appreciation of an amazing oeuvre that should bring Maalouf another public, at the risk of maybe losing his old one.

IBRAHIM MAALOUF Wind

Album · 2012 · World Fusion
Cover art Buy this album from MMA partners
Sean Trane
Fifth album from the Lebanese trumpet player, and maybe his better-known – and certainly his most luxuriously packaged oeuvre, displaying photos of Joux’s multi-layered assemblage in steps, over a 36 page booklet along with a separate and a separate digibook-style disc holder, all housed in a cardboard box, almost the thickness of two jewel case CDs.

This project was commissioned from the French film library (Cinémathèque), who wanted to reissue ancient silent films from the Albatross catalogue and put them to music. This fell rather well with Maalouf, since he’d always loved the Miles/Malle association in Ascensceur Pour l’Echaffaud, and Ibrahim took the project at heart. Indeed, you’ll find in the quieter moments of this soundtrack some Miles influences, but it won’t escape you that Maalouf’s Arabic origins are often audible as well. He chose the Proie Du Vent movie from René Clair (prey of the wind), and wrote down his successive feelings while appropriating himself the images to sonically colourise. His various feelings gave their names to the 12 compositions that made up the single session recording in NYC. Three of the four musicians Maalouf chose are well-known on the NYC scene, and he added Flemish composer/arranger Frank Woeste on piano and further arrangements.

Roughly half the tracks are not too far away from what you’d find on the Miles/Malle film, soft and slow melancholic pieces, starting with the opening Doubts, Waithing, etc… Rather standard and relatively soporific. The other half of the compositions are definitely more intense and dramatic, offering a Mediterranean ambiance in between Spain and deep Arabia. Needless to say that’s where most of the interest of the album stands; Woeste’s piano often adding depth like Tyner might have done. Tracks like Suspicion, Question & Answers, and the Gypsy-esque Escitement, amongst others.

In some ways, it’s a bit sad that this luxurious boxset doesn’t feature the film that inspired the music on the CD, especially given the amount of space it takes for a single disc affair

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