Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.The village of Marciac in the foothills of the Pyrenees hosts one of the oldest and largest jazz festivals in France. On a hot sultry evening last month, the 6,000-seat marquee was packed for a concert by Lebanese trumpeter Ibrahim Maalouf, who has played here about half a dozen times. The music was wild and celebratory — a rising trumpet melody over guitars and handclaps before more squealing trumpets come in with his trademark Arabic-sounding quarter tones. “Jazz in Marciac is one of the most important festivals of jazz in Europe. I like it a lot!” Maalouf says. “And it’s a place where the new history of jazz has been validated. The first time I played here [in 2011] I was very nervous because my background is in Middle Eastern music and classical music and I knew I had to prove that I had something to share with the jazz world.” Prove it he did, and he was invited back for the following edition and several times since.So there was an enormous welcome when he came on stage with his band, including four other trumpeters, to perform his upcoming album Trumpets of Michel-Ange, a celebration of his Lebanese musical heritage.Maalouf’s father, Nassim Maalouf, was also a trumpeter and, before Ibrahim was born, studied at the Paris Conservatoire with the celebrated classical trumpeter Maurice André. Nassim Maalouf had fled Lebanon during the civil war and Ibrahim was at school in France from the age of six. Yet they often returned to Lebanon, and a couple of days after the concert he was heading to the mountain village about an hour from Beirut where his father, aged 85, now lives. The cover of Maalouf’s album is a wonderful picture from 1925 of the village band in Lebanon in which his grandfather played. Aged 20, he’s third from the left at the back, dressed in a suit and tie and a fez. “The fanfare (brass band) at that time was the most fashionable thing, it was like TikTok now,” says Maalouf. “It was the heritage from France; they had the French Mandate in Lebanon and everyone loved the fanfares because it was a Frenchie thing. But my father tells me it sounded really bad because they were trying to play Arabic music and they couldn’t on those instruments. It didn’t sound good at all.”It was this that made Ibrahim’s father, Nassim, design a quarter-tone trumpet. In addition to the three regular valves, there’s an extra fourth valve that lowers the pitch of any note by a quarter tone and gives it a very flexible and expressive sound.“I wanted to pay tribute to my father through this album and celebrate his invention.” Although Maalouf admits he isn’t religious, he comes from a Lebanese Christian family, is married to a Christian wife and his children are baptised. And the title of the new album, Trumpets of Michel-Ange, refers to the Archangel Michael playing the trumpet at the Last Judgment, as depicted by Michelangelo in the Sistine Chapel. He relishes the confusion, in French, between Michel-Ange the archangel and Michel-Ange the artist. “In the 1960s, when my father was trying to get into the Paris Conservatoire, he found shelter in one of the smallest and oldest churches of Paris, Saint-Julien-le-Pauvre.” It’s just across the river from Notre-Dame and dates from the 12th century; Ibrahim’s father got a job as the sacristan. “He was working there, sleeping there and practising his trumpet there. And this is where he designed his trumpet — his big masterpiece, his Sistine Chapel fresco, was this trumpet. When I was young, I idolised him as someone like Michelangelo and so I decided to name the trumpet after Michel-Ange — Toma, the Trumpet of Michel-Ange. We’ve already sold 200 of these trumpets around the world.” And there are four quarter-tone trumpet players on stage alongside Maalouf.Ibrahim Maalouf has made a highly successful career, moving away from classical music where he started into world music and jazz, collaborating with musicians such as Wynton Marsalis, Jon Batiste, Angélique Kidjo and selling close to a million albums. This latest is his 19th release. He has sold out France’s largest arena, the 20,000-capacity Accor in Paris, and performed in more than 40 countries. Trumpets of Michel-Ange is a joyous celebration. He describes it as “a big global wedding, a big union”. The opening “Proposal” grew out of the music composed for Maalouf’s wedding (to his second wife) five years ago. The following “Love Anthem” keeps up the celebratory mood but makes it more global with a video of kids dancing in a Ugandan village.“I said I wanted to see people dancing to this track, so the video people said: ‘Let’s go to Lebanon and film people dancing there.’ But I wanted to see people from elsewhere in the world dancing to my music — from Chile, from Brazil, from Texas — so people understand that my message is not only about the Arab world. Then I received a message from these Ugandan dancers [the Fire K Stars] saying: ‘Hey we love your music, we’d love to work with you one day.’ I sent them the music and they sent back videos of them dancing which were great. So I asked my team to go and film them.”After the recent elections, France is in a politically polarised state, with a leftwing alliance pulled together to beat Marine Le Pen’s far-right Rassemblement National, which is concerned above all about immigration. As one of France’s more successful immigrants, how does Maalouf see the situation? He laughs and mentions travelling to the conservatoire when he was young. “I had a big beard at that time, because I didn’t have time to shave, and this weirdly shaped bag containing my trumpet. I’d travel on the Metro and people would always look at me. Instead of getting angry, my reaction was to go and ask the time from an old woman who was looking worried. And once she hears me talking she’s not worried any more. All my life I’ve been doing this with music, giving people hope.“It’s just the opinion of a trumpeter but my opinion is that the only thing that remains valuable in the middle of this big mess is that we still can have some emotions and music can bring joy.”‘Trumpets of Michel-Ange’ is released on September 20. Ibrahim Maalouf is on a European tour from September 14, ibrahimmaalouf.comFind out about our latest stories first — follow FT Weekend on Instagram and X, and subscribe to our podcast Life & Art wherever you listen
