Ibrahim Maalouf

Ibrahim Maalouf is a French jazz composer, arranger and trumpet player. Though he was born in Beirut, Maalouf and his family fled from their civil war torn home and settled in the Parisian suburbs when he was just a boy. Music was ingrained in him from an early age, as both his mother and father played instruments--piano and trumpet, respectively--and the disparate locales he was raised in have both factored into his jazz fusion style. His father introduced him to the trumpet at age seven and soon began teaching him improvisational skills and about the history of Arabic music, the latter of which is what Maalouf has built his reputation upon. One in a small group of jazz musicians infusing the genre with both rock and Middle Eastern influences, Maalouf has done well in cornering his own unique niche in the jazz world.