When Ibrahim Maalouf performs at the Abu Dhabi Cultural Foundation on Friday, we will hear the notes of his father.
The quarter-tone trumpet, set to glisten under the lights, was designed by Nassim Maalouf six decades ago out of frustration to solve a puzzle flummoxing regional jazz musicians for generations.
Arabic music is defined by its microtonal scales – essentially the missing notes that fall between the black and white keys of a piano – and the trumpet’s fixed three valves were never built to accommodate them.
Instead of continuing to find inventive ways to almost nail the Arabic pitch, Nassim satisfied that musical itch by adding a fourth valve. In doing so, he not only expanded the instrument’s range, but also its global reach, carried today through the adventurous sound scored by his son.
That pioneering legacy is celebrated in Maalouf’s new album, Trumpets of Michel-Ange, to be showcased in Abu Dhabi. “This album obviously means a lot because I am going right back to my roots and to the core of where I come from,” he tells The National.
“There are no computers, no famous guest stars, just the DNA of who I am. In all my previous projects, I tried to give that instrument new meaning by mixing it with my daily inspirations such as pop or electronic music, but this time, I brought it back to the reason it was invented 60 years ago, and that is to show the possibilities my father created.”
It’s a responsibility beyond the studio. The album follows the launch of his own educational initiative, Toma Academy, where musicians from around the world receive free online and in-person classes on how to play the quarter-tone trumpet. Maalouf has also begun his own mentoring at home, with four-year-old Nael Maalouf appearing on the album.
Born in Beirut in 1980, Maalouf was a child when his family left Lebanon for Paris during the civil war. The move was only meant to be temporary, which is why his household routine was etched with the caution informed by sudden displacement.
“My parents thought we would go to France for a few weeks or months and then we'd return to Lebanon,” he recalls. “But when we started to stay longer because the war was taking so much time, they were afraid we would never get back to Lebanese society and feel comfortable there.
“So they didn't want us to forget our Arabic, our roots. They didn't want us to be too close with friends, so they kind of isolated us a little bit."
That solitary period laid some of the seeds of Maalouf’s signature precision and eclecticism, playing his trumpet to the popular sounds on the radio at the time, ranging from Madonna to Phil Collins, alongside his father’s exacting musical lessons.
“He was very tough as a father in daily life and just as demanding when it came to music. Technically, he was precise, but sometimes a bit too rigid, and when you go too far in strictness, I find that you can lose flexibility,” he says. “Still, he taught me discipline and respect for the instrument. He taught me every day – since I was seven, till I turned 14. That daily presence shaped everything.”
Trumpets of Michel-Ange displays that technicality and Maalouf’s restless spirit, with Middle Eastern scales pulsing through jazz, Latin rhythms and touches of funk. Opener The Proposal is an exuberant fanfare channelling the promise of a coming wedding. With its name deriving from a folkloric and conversational form of poetry, Zajal is laced with the call-and-response interaction of the horns.
The closing piece, Timeless, brings it all together with Nassim and Nael joining Maalouf, as well as Malian kora father-and-son duo Toumani and Sidiki Diabate. The energy of the jam session cannot disguise the achingly poignant notion of a torch being passed from one generation to the next.
Maalouf reveals the record is a way to come to terms with his father’s mortality.
"My father is 85, an old man. I don't know how much longer he will live. He just had cancer and now he speaks slowly, with the weight of time. He lives in his house in the Lebanese mountains," he says.
"I'm thinking about this. I'm thinking about what he gave to me when I was a kid. I've made 20 albums and that's great, but why am I doing all this? Because one day someone left his mountain village with a dream – to be a trumpeter, to create something new, to bring Middle Eastern influences into Western music."
Maalouf is also reflecting on the price paid for that effort.
“I grew up watching my father respect every rule of the French classical music world because he wanted so much to be accepted. He did everything the right way, but he was never respected. He was a farmer from the mountains of Lebanon. He didn’t go to school, didn’t speak French, knew nothing about classical music,” he says.
“At 22, he decided to go to Europe to study trumpet and classical music in France. He thought that to achieve what he wanted, he had to follow the codes of that world completely. He did, and yet he was never fully accepted.”
Instead of anger, Maalouf explains he channelled that pain through a fiercely independent approach to what he considers a conservative French jazz scene.
“I have learned not to fight for spaces that don’t value me,” he says. “If I’m not accepted here, I’ll go somewhere else. I’ll build my own space. I want to be free. Don’t dictate anything to me. I want to make music that shows how much respect I have for jazz, classical, Arabic music, for my father and my instrument.”
A particular track from the album captures that journey, although chances are you will not hear it in Abu Dhabi.
“There’s a song called Stranger. It’s my father’s life in one piece – someone who never felt at home anywhere, who felt like a stranger even in his own body. It tells his story from beginning to end,” he says.
“In the middle, there’s a long improvisation that represents a life journey. When we recorded it, I knew exactly what I wanted to express. But when I started performing it on stage during the first shows of the tour, it became too emotional. I had to stop it during the show because it was overwhelming, and I have not revisited it again.”
But that story will keep going, as Maalouf confirms two more albums will follow to complete the trilogy, which could even form his own musical epitaph.
“Once I finish those, I might even stop everything, because that trilogy feels like the purpose I was meant to fulfil,” he notes. “After that, maybe I’ll start something completely different…. architecture, perhaps.”
In the meantime, preparations are underway for what could be a historic performance: an already announced 40,000-seat stadium concert at Paris La Defense on April 7, 2027.
“It’s going to be the largest instrumental jazz concert ever organised,” he says. “I first played a big show in Paris in 2016 at Accor Arena for 17,000 people, and everyone said it was impossible, that no one would come to hear trumpet music. It sold out nine months in advance, and we added two more nights.
“For 2027, I want something even more ambitious, with a huge production, many guests, and complete openness. And you know what? I don’t want it sold out – the whole point is I want people being able to come even at the last minute.”
Ibrahim Maalouf performs at Cultural Foundation Auditorium, Abu Dhabi on Friday. Doors open at 8pm; tickets from Dh250
