Trumpets of Michel-Ange

Long based in France, trumpeter Ibrahim Maalouf was born in Lebanon and this is a tribute to his roots and specifically his father, Nassim Maalouf, also a trumpeter. It was he who devised the quarter-tone trumpet that Maalouf plays. In fact, the album cover is a photo from 1925 and includes Maalouf's grandfather (third from the left at the back) in the village band in Lebanon. His father said it didn't sound that good because they didn't have quarter-tone trumpets. The title of the album refers to Michael the Archangel who trumpets the coming of Christ, as well as Michelangelo, although the music is that of a high-spirited party. It celebrates what Maalouf describes as a wedding celebration, and some of the music from the opening track, ‘The Proposal’, is from Maalouf's own wedding. The quarter-tone trumpet doesn't sound as weird as you might expect, partly because it just seems right in this music, but it's perhaps most pronounced in ‘Stranger’. As a pleasant surprise, the late Toumani Diabaté pops up in the penultimate track, ‘Timeless’, on kora.