Ibrahim Maalouf - Diagnostic (2011)

Born in Beirut, now settled in France, Lebanese trumpeter Ibrahim Maalouf plays a heady mix of jazz, funk and improvisation steeped in classical and Arabic styles. In Paris, he has become a noted figure on the electro-jazz scene, bringing his style to modern funk and electronica acts, but his music also has a mystical, contemplative quality that sets him apart from most contemporary players. Named `Discovery of the Year´ at the 2010 French Jazz Music Awards Ibrahim has played with renowned artists such as Amadou and Mariam, Sting, Salif Keita, Toumani Diabate, Matthieu Chédid (aka M) and the legendary Lebanese composer/singer and oud player Marcel Khalifé. UK gigs to date include the Barbican, the Jazz Cafe and the ICA, and Ibrahim has featured on Max Reinhardt's Late Junction (BBC Radio 3) and The Strand (BBC World Service). Diagnostic marks the third and final chapter in a musical triptych which trumpeter Ibrahim Maalouf began in 2007 with Diasporas, his first album, and enriched with Diachronism some two years later. Better than a continuation, this new record is an outcome, the result of much research into the interplay of harmonies, tonal dynamics and their acclimatization to rhythms, and the unsuspected connivances which exist between differing musical styles. You can recognize the major influence exerted by marching bands from the Balkans, the batucadas of Brazil, Latin jazz… or heavy metal. But Diagnostic is above all Maalouf's most personal work: a kind of original soundtrack in which the trumpeter has staged - with remarkable powers of suggestion - the affective life of a musician who has always seen his chosen art-form as therapy, with all that such a commitment implies in terms of sincerity and abandon. Recorded in the Parisian studio of producer and film-music composer Armand Amar (Le Couperet, Indigènes), Diagnostic proposes eleven original compositions, each of which formulates an emotion - sometimes a contradiction between several such sentiments - and all of which dive deep into the mysterious cesspool of emotions to set free languidness, flights of fancy, lightning-flashes and flashbacks. Here, for the first time, you can hear Ibrahim play piano, the instrument with which he began his apprenticeship in music. You can hear him sing, too. Although each part has its own concept - the titles are inspired by close members of his family - Diagnostic bears witness to a stripped-down instinct and a mastery of technique which serve - exclusively - the sensitive, the fragile… and the pleasure-principle. This is an album which answers the necessity of transcending genres in order to transmute pain, anger, depression and doubt into the very force of life.

Tracklist:

1. Lily (is 2)
2. Will soon be a woman
3. Intro
4. Maeva in the wonderland
5. Your soul
6. Everything or nothing
7. Never serious
8. We'll always care about you
9. Douce (feat Oxmo Puccino)
10. All the beautifull things
11. Beirut