Opening concert of the Enjoy Jazz Festival with Ibrahim Maalouf. Ludwigshafen, officially Ludwigshafen am Rhein, is a city in the German state of Rhineland-Palatinate, on the Rhine River, opposite Mannheim.
For the opening event of the Enjoy Jazz Festival, which takes place for more than a month in various locations in the Mannheim-Heidelberg region, Ibrahim Maalouf was secured this year.
He has long been a star in Germany, and a superstar in France and the countries of the Middle East. On this evening, he performed his program “Trumpets of Michel-Ange” with five other trumpeters, a saxophonist, two guitarists, a drummer, and a dancer at the BASF Feierabendhaus in Ludwigshafen.
The first surprise was the significantly younger average age of the audience compared to many other jazz concerts. This demonstrates the importance of the Lebanese-French musician, who does not fit into the ranks of young artists who, while technically excellent, ultimately repeat rather tiresome, hackneyed phrases for a sentimental, aging audience.
Maalouf doesn’t care at all about styles or conventions. Sometimes his band sounds like Fanfare Ciocârlia, then quiet, plaintive passages alternate with flamenco rhythms.
Everything always culminates in Arabic maqam music, whose complex scales, played on Maalouf’s four-valve trumpet, an invention of his father, are able to express an enormous range of moods and feelings.
Trumpets of Michel-Ange – Melodies created a few years ago at Maalouf’s wedding with musician friends, based on traditional motifs of Oriental wedding music. They formed the starting point for the music project “Trumpets of Michel-Ange,” in which all six trumpeters play on the modified trumpet – as a tribute to Maalouf’s father.
The lively and likeable musician promised a musical wedding celebration right from the start. And the concert began where most usually end: despite the awkward cinema seating, the entire audience stood and danced, singing along loudly, in the venerable Feierabendhaus from the very first piece.
This perfectly fulfilled what the organizers of Enjoy Jazz had hoped for in their opening remarks and what Ibrahim Maalouf also stated: that it doesn’t always require further growth and rapid expansion to satisfy the desires and needs of the present, but rather cultural events like this, where people of diverse backgrounds, faiths, and cultures can celebrate and enjoy themselves together.
