Born in 1970 in Pantin, France, David El-Malek grew up in Israel until 1979, when he returned to France and settled first in Bordeaux.
His first musical steps came very late, following his military service in January 1990. At just twenty years of age, with no precise professional project in mind and working as a day laborer for an ice cream company, he bought himself a tenor saxophone and a method, and set about discovering the instrument with a passion. In September of the same year, he entered the Conservatoire de Montreuil for a year, taking lessons with Jean-Claude Forenbach, where he discovered harmonic theory, which proved to be a real revelation.
Continuing to make up lost ground away from the beaten track, he gradually built up a richly personal musicality and phrasing, and gradually entered a network of professional musicians.
At the end of 1994, he joined Bruno Angelini's Quartet Est, alongside Jules Bikoko, Daniel Garcia Bruno and Laurent Robin. The following year, the group was selected for the Concours National de la Défense, where David was awarded third prize for soloist, second prize for composition and the jury's special prize.
After participating in the recording of no less than six albums in 2007 (including those by Elisabeth Kontomanou and André Ceccarelli), he decided to build a long-term project that is particularly close to his heart, "Music from Source", a repertoire of original compositions and arrangements of Judeo-Spanish folk and liturgical music. He sees this new stage both as a return to his own sources, strongly imbued with his childhood in Israel, and as carrying a profound universality, so much so that he wishes to share these timeless and bewitching melodies in a new format.
Partially performed with the Orchestre National de Lyon in April 2004 at the Auditorium de Lyon under the direction of Wayne Marshall, then again in July 2006 at the World Saxophone Congress in Slovenia with the Ljubljana Orchestra, the project was adapted to a more intimate format (brass ensemble and rhythm section) during a residency at the Opéra de Lyon at the end of 2007, then recorded in this same format.A second stage with string quartet and traditional North African percussion appeared in 2012, and was adapted in early 2013 for the Festival Présence for the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France and 16 singers.
David has performed with : Ambrose Akinmusire, Billy Drummond, Ira Coleman, Gregory Hutchinson, Robert Glasper, Peter Martin, Steve Williams, Antoine Roney, Michael Bowie, Dave Liebman, Enrico Pieranunzi, Hein Van De Geyn, Archie Shepp.
