Jazz, soul & blues
Ibrahim Maalouf
Ibrahim Maalouf (born 1980 in Beirut, based in France) is the most popular trumpeter in European jazz, inventor of a language where jazz marries the quarter-tones of Arabic music. Montreux is part of his story, from the festival to the lake itself.
Ibrahim Maalouf: from the festival to the floating stage
July 2021: a stage on the lake
Discovered as early as 2006 at the Montreux Jazz Festival, Ibrahim Maalouf returned over the years; in July 2021 he played there for the fourth time, but on an unprecedented stage: a floating platform built twenty-five metres offshore, anchored in twelve metres of water, a first in the history of a festival famed for the acoustics of its halls.
The summer of health restrictions, only five hundred spectators, the Alps and the sailboats as a backdrop. Accompanied by Belgian guitarist François Delporte, Maalouf played “Beirut”, which he had composed at the age of twelve, as Lebanon was emerging from war.
The quarter-tone trumpet
Son of the trumpeter Nassim Maalouf, inventor of a four-valve trumpet able to play the quarter-tones of the Arabic maqam, Ibrahim Maalouf turned that inheritance into a language of his own: a jazz open to the East, to pop and to improvisation, which today fills the largest halls. He has also shared the stage with Quincy Jones, whom he hailed as “the coolest jazzman on earth”.
He is also heard close to Montreux, at the Cully Jazz Festival, in Lavaux: the Riviera and its surroundings have become, for him, familiar territory.
These places on the map
Tap a marker to open the place page.