Ibrahim Maalouf | Hermanos Gutiérrez | Little Moon

Doors 6:00PM/Show 7:00PM

NPR Music’s Tiny Desk Contest is hitting the road! Join us this summer for a one-of-a-kind concert experience showcasing the incredible talent of the 2023 Contest Winner, plus some amazing Tiny Desk Contest artists from each city.

** Arrive early for a conversation In The Tent with Tiny Desk series producer Bobby Carter about the most famous desk in music, and how emerging artists get to play behind it. **

French-Lebanese trumpeter Ibrahim Maalouf, one of the most distinguished instrumentalists in the global music scene and an NPR Tiny Desk concert alum, has landed international praise for his avant-garde genre mixing. Guitar duo Hermanos Gutiérrez, who have also appeared on NPR’s Tiny Desk, use their complex arrangements to take their listeners on a time-traveling journey. Also featuring a set by this year’s Tiny Desk Contest winner Little Moon, a Utah band that mixes folk, pop, and indie rock.

Nearly 6,000 unsigned bands and artists entered the Tiny Desk Contest in 2023. Our judges picked one winner who will get to perform behind the Tiny Desk at NPR’s headquarters, and we discovered many great musicians along the way. Now, we’re teaming up with Member stations to take the show across the country this summer.

The 2023 Tiny Desk Contest is presented by Capital One and supported by Guayaki Yerba Mate.
*Please Note: A limited amount of chairs will be available at this show, but you are also permitted to bring your own. 

About the artists

With 15 studio albums released, Ibrahim Maalouf went from prizewinner of the greatest international classical trumpet competitions around the world to becoming the most popular jazzman of the French musical scene. Selling out the Volkswagen Arena in Istanbul, the Lincoln Jazz Center in New York City, as well as the Kennedy Center in Washington, he became, in 2016, the first jazzman in history to have sold out the largest concert venue in France, the AccorArena of Paris Bercy. Scouted by living legend Quincy Jones, and described by the New York Times as a “virtuoso”, Ibrahim has worked over the years with Wynton Marsalis, Angélique Kidjo, Melody Gardot, the Kronos Quartet, Trilok Gurtu, Josh Groban, Marcus Miller, Salif Keita, and many more. In 2021, he made an appearance on the Late Show with Stephen Colbert alongside Jon Batiste, who presented him as a “living legend of jazz”. Over a few years, the musician, film score composer and multiple times award-winner (Victoires de la Musique, Césars, Lumières…) has become a compelling artist and a symbol for intercultural dialogue. Once again where you least expected him, with his 16th album Capacity to Love, Ibrahim Maalouf wants to make an impression with brand new, surprising, and innovative popular music.

“When Alejandro and I play together, it’s like we are driving a car,” says Estevan Gutiérrez, one half of the guitar duo Hermanos Gutiérrez. “It’s like we are taking a road trip. Sometimes we’re driving through a desert. Sometimes we’re traveling up the coast. But always we are in nature, and we see the most beautiful landscapes, sunrises, sunsets.” The music these two brothers make evokes expansive plains and rough wildernesses, saguaros and surfs, spaghetti westerns and Morricone soundtracks, Lynch and Jarmusch. With their guitars they travel through landscapes haunted by vaqueros, cancioneros, wanderers, fugitives, lovers, family—and whatever ghosts their listeners bring to the music. “Each album is a journey on its own,” says Alejandro Gutiérrez. “We just have to go with the music, trust in ourselves, and see where it takes us.”

Led by singer-songwriter Emma Hardyman’s soaring vocals and intricate arrangements, Little Moon is a Utah band that mixes folk, pop, and indie rock. The group’s powerful Tiny Desk Contest winning entry, “Wonder Eye,” is about how “accepting the mysterious, shadowy nature of death can deepen one’s sense of humanity and soften the ways we see ourselves and each other.”