Shis latest album, titled Capacity to Love*, mixes jazz, funk, rap and electronic music all at the same time… like a great “mezze” mixing styles and influences. Conceived at the time when (re)started to rumble the weapons in the east of Europe, Ibrahim Maalouf says to have envisaged it as a hymn to peace. “This 15e album celebrates the beauty of interbreeding and sharing,” he says. “All things that we particularly need in the troubled times we are going through,” insists the trumpeter.
To compose it, Ibrahim Maalouf entrusted the keys to his studio to two young producers (NuTone and Henry Was) and invited personalities as diverse as Matthieu Chedid, Gregory Porter, JP Cooper, Pos of De La Soul to play and sing with him. or even Sharon Stone. A new illustration of how this artist sees his art. “Music is an ode to fraternity and tolerance,” he proclaims, adding that his whole life has been a succession of beautiful encounters. As he performs a series of concerts across France, he tells us about them here.
Marc-Antoine Moreau and Vincent Segal
“You never know what a date can trigger. We all know this story of the “butterfly effect”: a flapping of wings at one end of the planet can cause a storm on the other side of the globe. This is what I experienced when I met Vincent Ségal. That was a little over twenty years ago. I was studying trumpet at the conservatory and, after a catastrophic lesson from which I came out particularly dejected with the conviction that I would not find my place in the world of classical music…, I started walking aimlessly down the street. from Rome. I joined Fnac Saint-Lazare and started leafing through books. Here was a book with an inspiring title: The show guide. I opened it. He was gathering a whole bunch of professional contact information. My gaze fell on a small label which was interested in world music. I thought this was the kind of house that might be interested in me.
I called and found a switchboard operator who had a funny voice. She explained to me that her company was closing and that all the employees were packing their boxes. I left my number anyway. An hour later, the boss of this structure, Marc-Antoine Moreau, offered me to come and see him. I played him two or three pieces. He then made a phone call to one of his friends who was recording with an Occitan group near Austerlitz. “Go there right away, they’re waiting for you,” he whispered to me. I gone ahead. This is where I made my first major professional encounter with Vincent Ségal, who asked me to improvise a solo. He recorded it and slipped in: “See? We’re gonna put your track on our record. It was exactly what we were looking for. That very morning I was in despair. In the evening, I found myself playing for the first time with the pros. Vincent Ségal then introduced me to all the people who matter in the world of music. Marc-Antoine Moreau passed away today. But I owe him a lot. In the same way that he discovered Hamid El Gnawi or Amadou and Mariam, I can say that it was he who allowed me to be who I am today. »
saddle Lhasa
“I passed one of my first major international competitions in Washington in the spring of 2002. I took the opportunity to go to New York and see Ground Zero where I had the impression that the Twin Towers recently destroyed by terrorist attacks. Until then, I wanted to become an architect. It was perhaps when I saw these ruins that I said to myself that I was going to make music instead. Six months later, I was in Montreal where my path crossed that of Lhasa de Sela. We got on well right away. She was an extraordinary singer, endowed with a rare ability to listen. She gave me the feeling of immediately understanding what I was doing. We shared a nomadic history, a form of Creole identity. She also asked me to improvise and offered to participate in her album The Living Road. This is where the outline of what would be my first album began. I keep pondering what she said to me then: “Don’t try to copy anyone. Just be yourself.” Lhasa passed away in 2010 but I often think back to her words. »
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Matthew Chedid
“It was through Vincent Ségal that I met Matthieu. I played on his second album. Then I asked him to work with me on mine. With him too, things happened naturally. I immediately understood that we had a special bond. If I consider him a brother, it’s because we have a very strong bond in common, which surely owes to a troubling story. Beyond our common Lebanese origins, we have an unexpected point of connection. Indeed, we understood that our grandmothers (Odette Ghossein for me, Andrée Chedid for him) played cards in the same club in Alexandria. Both had emigrated from Beirut and I imagine them typing the cardboard while watching the Nile flow. »
Alejandra Norambuena Skira
“In children’s stories, good fairies sometimes bend over the cradle of the characters. Alejandra Norambuena Skira is for me one of those fairies. He is an important personality in the world of music. She works in the shadows but her role is immense. She worked for a long time in a Sacem action fund which supported artists by distributing grants. I must have been 23 when I played him what was going to be my first album (Diasporas, released in 2007). I can still see her bursting into tears listening to it and asking me this question: “What is your biggest dream?” My answer was simple: “Live from music.” »
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Sting
“It was during a concert at the Théâtre du Châtelet that I met him. I believe it was Steve Nieve, Elvis Costello’s keyboard player, who brought him in. At the end of the show, Sting came to congratulate me on my solo. He took me in his arms and told me that he would like to play with me. At times like these, you don’t know what to think. I couldn’t help but tell myself that it was a polite expression intended to make me happy. But, a few weeks later, he called me and I found myself in his house in Tuscany. I spent two dream weeks recording in his studio. That an artist like Sting behaves like this with me gave me a lot of confidence. Especially since he called me back several times afterwards. In 2009, he even offered me to tour with him. But I had to refuse because I was about to become a father and I wanted to be there for the birth of my daughter. Everyone thought I had fallen on my head. I was told that I was crazy to decline a forty-date tour with him in this way, but that didn’t stop me from finding him later. It is thus with Sting that I played at the Bataclan for the reopening of the place after the attacks of November 2015. “
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Hiba Tawaji
“My wife is an incredibly strong person. It is an invaluable support for me. I do not hesitate to say that she is stronger than me. The music brought us together (she has been a singer since 2007 and became a star throughout the Middle East after her participation in The Voice in 2015, Ed). Not only does it help me breathe, but it allowed me to get through the hardest period of my life: the legal marathon that followed the publication in a newspaper of a false article (Ibrahim Maalouf was accused there of sexual assault, editor’s note). I who had, until then, had a peaceful existence, I did not know how to fight and found myself helpless in the face of these attacks. Hiba taught me a lot during this time. And this ordeal has greatly strengthened our bonds. If I can speak quietly of these horrible months today, it is because I have not only been exonerated by justice, but I have also condemned the title which had propagated these despicable accusations. »
Quincy Jones
“It was in Montreux that we met. Quincy Jones comes here every year. He attended the concert I gave there in the summer of 2017. He stayed until the end, which he rarely does. We met again afterwards. And he offered me to work with him. When he told me, I couldn’t believe it. This monument, this legend that accompanied myths like Ray Charles or Michael Jackson, took me into its stable. I admit that, even today, I have to pinch myself to realize. »
Sharon Stone
“For my 15e album, I placed at the opening of the disc an extract of Charlie Chaplin’s voice taken from the Dictator. This speech seems to me to sum up the madness of the world in which we live. I wanted a female voice, from a cinema icon, to answer her in the last track. We didn’t know each other, Sharon Stone and I, but I knew that she followed me on social networks and she had expressed her interest in my work several times on the Web. That’s why I decided to ring his doorbell. I made her listen to what I had composed and her reaction really struck me since she immediately started crying. The sincerity of his reaction overwhelmed me. When the music stopped, she told me she had a line for me. It’s the one she says, to this tune, in Our Flag. A poem of great strength. We shot the clip at her house and again the tears started streaming down her face as the camera rolled. I was very touched that she exposed herself like this. »
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Maurice Andre
“This great soloist was an immense trumpet teacher. It was he who trained my father when he arrived in France at the end of the 1960s. Maurice also accompanied me and I can say that he was also my teacher. This is why I was particularly happy to be able to pay tribute to him by reactivating a prize that bears his name. The Maurice-André Trumpet Competition is an international trumpet competition whose first edition took place in 1979. In 2006, the sixth and last edition of this competition took place. Last November, we recreated this prize which was awarded to the German Sebastian Berner. By participating in this adventure, I had the impression that a circle was closing. »
Marie Louise Girod
“I will end by evoking here a great lady who worked with my father, an incredible woman, full of humor and positivity. I want to talk about Marie-Louise Girod, the titular organist of the Oratoire du Louvre in Paris. She was the wife of André Parrot, a great archaeologist who was also director of the Louvre. She was an extraordinary woman. She often invited us to play, my father and me, during the offices of this Protestant temple when I was 8 or 9 years old. She encouraged me a lot and, thanks to her, we gave concerts mixing trumpet and organ to music by Vivaldi, Albinoni or Purcell. It was she who made me aware of the importance of improvisation when I was young. »
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*Capacity to loveby Ibrahim Maalouf, with Gregory Porter, Pos of De La Soul, JP Cooper, Erick the Architect from Flatbush Zombies and D Smoke. But also -M- (Matthieu Chedid), Cimafunk, Tank and the Bangas, Sheléa Frazier, Alemeda, Sharon Stone and Charlie Chaplin.