Ibrahim Maalouf, jazz trumpeter and composer

Ibrahim Maalouf, jazz trumpeter and composer: "Before playing he explained the story behind the song, which was a journey – it was in 1993 as a 12 year old that he was able to return to Beirut alone for the first time (his parents having fled to Paris during the war) and he wandered the streets with his walkman, earphones plugged but playing no music, instead composing music in his mind and looking at the bullet marks in the walls of homes which had been rebuilt so many times over during the war that not much of the devastation was actually visible.. but after walking for a while, he sat and rested for some time.. and then suddenly when he got up again he noticed a street in front of him completely devastated and abandoned – something that he had actually been looking to see – but in that moment he was listening to (having just discovered) Led Zepplin and the combination of seeing the devastation and the music actually scared him and he ran away. And so this song tells that journey." The song is Beirut, and he is Ibrahim Maalouf.

Maalouf is more than a jazz trumpeter who plays Arabic music with quarter tones, he is also a composer and arranger, as you can see and hear in Point 33, a concert commissioned by Radio France and Festival de Saint-Denis. He has also made four albums to date, samples of which you can hear on his YouTube page.