Bio:
Born in 1980 in Beirut, the trumpeter Ibrahim Maalouf is currently the most popular instrumentalist of the French musical scene. His work is infamous for its particular fusion of multiple musical genres and has been renowned around the world for more than ten years now.
Filling the Volkswagen Arena in Istanbul, playing sold-out concerts at the Lincoln Jazz Center in New York, and traveling to over 40 countries around the world in the last 10 years, he became the first jazzman in history to fill the largest concert hall in France. Indeed, Ibrahim put on a historic show on 14 December 2016, selling out more than 8 months in advance at the AccorHotels Arena in Paris Bercy.
A few months later, Ibrahim creates a surprise. Described as a "virtuoso" by the New York Times, he performed in an exceptional concert in collaboration with The New Levant Initiative at the Kennedy Center in Washington DC for the world premiere of his album "Levantine Symphony No.1".
Ibrahim is rewarded by 2 "Victoires du Jazz" and 2 "Victoires de la Musique" ("World Music Album" and "Concert or Tour of the Year") which are the first awards for victories in music given to an instrumentalist since their creation more than 33 years ago. Ibrahim has also received an "Echo Jazz" in Germany, a "César for Best Film Music" and a "Prix Lumières" for Best Film Music in 2016. He also received the honorary awards of Chevalier de l'Ordre du Mérite and Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres from the French government.
As a teenager, Ibrahim was at the top of the world's biggest international competitions and began a career as a classical soloist, but from the 2000s onwards, spotted for his ability to colour the music of his improvisations, he became an essential figure in pop, jazz and so-called "World" music. Sting, Salif Keita, Amadou & Mariam, Tryo, Matthieu Chédid, Lhasa de Sela and many other artists of very varied styles call on him.
Between 2007 and 2019, Ibrahim composes, arranges and produces more than 15 albums for himself and other artists. He also composed more than 10 symphonic works as well as a fortnight of feature film music.
Spotted by the legendary producer Quincy Jones during a concert at the Montreux Jazz Festival in 2017, Ibrahim became one of the artists the American producer regularly promoted via the Los Angeles-based Quincy Jones Productions.
In 2019, Ibrahim signs the soundtracks of 3 films including "Celle Que Vous Croyez" by Safy Nebbou with Juliette Binoche, a real international success, then he goes on a summer tour across France with the Balkan band Haïdouti Orkestar.
Ibrahim followed this up with his 11th studio album "S3NS" in September 2019, performing to a sold-out crowd at the Olympia (Paris) on 23, 24 and 25 September and embarking on a world tour.
At the same time Ibrahim has been teaching trumpet and improvisation in conservatories since 1999. He has been invited several times by ITG (International Trumpet Guild) in the United States for concerts and master classes, and has been developing for several years a specific pedagogy for the teaching of classical musical improvisation in French conservatories.
His last pedagogical collaboration dates back to autumn 2019, when all the young students of the association Orchestre à l'École composed of several thousand orchestras across France joined Ibrahim at all his Zenith concerts in order to go on stage for the first time in their lives, and then accompany Ibrahim and his musicians on his composition "Happy Face".
In 2019, Ibrahim will compose, perform and record all the music for the show "Monsieur X" created by Mathilda May and performed by the famous actor and comedian Pierre Richard. Show that will win the Molière for best solo performance of the year 2020.
He also relaunches the Maurice André International Trumpet Competition, for its 7th edition, 14 years after the last competition. First initiated in the ’70s, this competition of international reputation is gathering the best classical trumpeters from all over the world.
In November 2020 Ibrahim has celebrated his 40th birthday and released his new album 40 MELODIES. For the first time in a duet with François Delporte, his guitarist of the last ten years, the album will also feature many other renowned guests (Sting, Marcus Miller, Matthieu Chedid, Alfredo Rodriguez, Richard Bona, Trilok Gurtu, Hüsnü Senlendrici, Jon Batiste, Arturo Sandoval, and others).
The Recôncavo is an almost invisible center-of-gravity. Circumscribing the Bay of All Saints, this region was landing for more enslaved human beings than any other such throughout all of human history. Not unrelated, it is also birthplace of some of the most physically & spiritually uplifting music ever made. —Sparrow
"Dear Sparrow: I am thrilled to receive your email! Thank you for including me in this wonderful matrix."
—Susan Rogers: Personal recording engineer for Prince, inc. "Purple Rain", "Sign o' the Times", "Around the World in a Day"... Director of the Berklee Music Perception and Cognition Laboratory
I'm Pardal here in Brazil (that's "Sparrow" in English). The deep roots of this project are in Manhattan, where Allen Klein (managed the Beatles and The Rolling Stones) called me about royalties for the estate of Sam Cooke... where Jerry Ragovoy (co-wrote Time is On My Side, sung by the Stones; Piece of My Heart, Janis Joplin of course; and Pata Pata, sung by the great Miriam Makeba) called me looking for unpaid royalties... where I did contract and licensing for Carlinhos Brown's participation on Bahia Black with Wayne Shorter and Herbie Hancock...
...where I rescued unpaid royalties for Aretha Franklin (from Atlantic Records), Barbra Streisand (from CBS Records), Led Zeppelin, Mongo Santamaria, Gilberto Gil, Astrud Gilberto, Airto Moreira, Jim Hall, Wah Wah Watson (Melvin Ragin), Ray Barretto, Philip Glass, Clement "Sir Coxsone" Dodd for his interest in Bob Marley compositions, Cat Stevens/Yusuf Islam and others...
...where I worked with Earl "Speedo" Carroll of the Cadillacs (who went from doo-wopping as a kid on Harlem streetcorners to top of the charts to working as a janitor at P.S. 87 in Manhattan without ever losing what it was that made him special in the first place), and with Jake and Zeke Carey of The Flamingos (I Only Have Eyes for You)... stuff like that.
Yeah this is Bob's first record contract, made with Clement "Sir Coxsone" Dodd of Studio One and co-signed by his aunt because he was under 21. I took it to Black Rock to argue with CBS' lawyers about the royalties they didn't want to pay. They paid.
MATRIX MUSICAL
The Matrix was built below among some of the world's most powerfully moving music, some of it made by people barely known beyond village borders. Or in the case of Sodré, his anthem A MASSA — a paean to Brazil's poor ("our pain is the pain of a timid boy, a calf stepped on...") — having blasted from every radio between the Amazon and Brazil's industrial south, before he was silenced. (that's me left, with David Dye & Kim Junod for U.S. National Public Radio) ... The Matrix started with Sodré, with João do Boi, with Roberto Mendes, with Bule Bule, with Roque Ferreira... music rooted in the sugarcane plantations of Bahia. Hence our logo (a cane cutter).