What Happened in 2021?

Foreword

Dear reader,
let me reassure you from the beginning: this is not a post about what happened in the world in the past year. It is – again – one of those megalomaniac/egocentric posts about what Mazen Kerbaj did in the past year. Needless to say, I will spare you all the bad things I did (I do a lot of those ever since I am on our beloved earth), and focus solely on things I could brag about in a cocktail reception.

Mazen Kerbaj: The Musical

Commissioned by the Counterflows festival for their 2021 edition, The Musical is my first movie ever. It was shot and produced in complete isolation, during the first Covid-19 lockdown, and it addresses both literally and figuratively the impossibility for the performing musician to meet and play with other musicians or in front of an audience. 

Here’s the synopsis that accompanied the movie: This short movie follows an imaginary day in the life of experimental musician Mazen Kerbaj. In more than 15 apparitions, Kerbaj delves in activities as varied as sleeping, talking, praying, playing, or fighting, sometimes alone and sometimes with himself. The result is an accurate yet amusing self-portrait, exploring both the unique music practice of the artist and his humoristic approach to megalomania.

Here’s the movie (better watched in full screen and with good sound system):

The festival also commissioned me an accompanying interview, and I thought it should be in line with the movie:

If you want a bonus, here’s the making that my son Evan (check his Youtube channel) made:

My Father is Not Adolf Hitler

I can see already the fixed grin of my German readers when they will read this title. I reassure you, you are not alone: the people from the German radio Deutschlandfunk Kultur weren’t very enthusiastic neither when they learned that this was the title of the radio piece I was making for them. Fortunately, the title made sense to them once they heard the said piece. The piece was commissioned to be part of a one hour program around the general theme of destruction and reconstruction. They told me that something about the recent events in Beirut would be a nice way to tackle the theme, but I was left free to propose what I wanted. The only given was that it should be around 15 minutes.

I am putting below both the original version in English and the German version that they translated and I recorded with my voice (the listener will have to bare my horrible French accent in both languages). You will find also the short interview done at the radio station and where I talk a little bit about Beirut and the piece.

Learning Deutsch

Staying in the German related business, I am very happy to announce here that I finally published Learning Deutsch, a book that was completed in 2018 and was patiently waiting in a drawer. The book is now available to order online from Headache Comics, and you will find below the cover and some excerpts.

And here’s the book’s presentation by the publisher:
In 2018, after moving to Berlin with his family, Mazen Kerbaj decided to learn German, in his own personal way: one new word per day, that he illustrates with a related self-portrait. The book is of course a language-learning tool, albeit an unconventional one, but it is also an open diary that lets us in the intimacy of the artist and his day-to-day life.

Antoine

I am not done with Antoine and I guess I will never be. Meanwhile, I managed to finish two new chapters of my ongoing graphic novel dealing with my father’s life and artistic legacy, as well as many other side subjects like the pre-civil war golden age of the Lebanese arts and culture, the irreversible passing of time, the unfaithful nature of souvenirs and my own relation to all of these.

Chapter 4 and 5 are out on Samandal, and I guess you will be able to find them soon in Lebanon and in France, and in all French speaking countries. Are they available online? I have no clue. Here‘s the publisher’ Instagram account.
It is still not clear to me how many chapters there will be at the end, and I am very happy (and lucky) to be able to discover where the project is going while working on it. Each new completed chapter leaves me with a feeling of satisfaction and one of despair and anxiety. Where to go now? And most importantly, how to go there?
I hope that I will be able to finish one to two chapters in 2022.

Graphème

But enough with comics, drawings and other depressing subjects! Let’s talk about music for a change. I am so happy, proud and lucky to be part of the newly born structure Smallest Functional Unit that published the first issue of Graphème in September 2021. SFU was founded last year in Berlin by Magda Mayas, Ute Wassermann, Racha Gharbieh, Tony Buck and yours truly, with the main goal of creating a new periodical dedicated to the publication of experimental music scores.
You can check (and order) the first issue of Graphème (in which i have a brand new composition) here.

• 

• 

• 

Al Azraqayn

In August 2021, all seven members of Karkhana met for the first time in over two years for a three days residency and a concert in Bonn, followed by a concert at the A L’Arme festival in Berlin. The plan was to meet in Bonn first to rehearse some of our old pieces and possibly add a new composition before the Berlin gig. We ended up composing four new pieces for a full new 50 minutes set. We recorded the new material live at A L’Arme festival but we still didn’t listen to the result. Hopfully it sounds like we want, in which case it will be released soon enough. If not, we will record it again whenever it will be possible to meet again.

Working with this band is always a true pleasure, be it in studio or on stage, and you can hear this pleasure in Al Azraqayn, our latest double album recorded live at the Bimhuis in Amsterdam. It was released by Karl Records, and was selected in the best albums of 2021 by The Wire, The Attic, and Norman Records. The LP version is already out of print, but you can get the download version from Karkhana’s Bancamp.

Another album that was released in 2021, that made it also in various best of 2021 lists and that involves three members of Karkhana is my dear friend Maurice Louca’s Saet El Hazz (The Luck Hour). It is a great album that I am grateful to play on.

What Will Happen in 2022?

OK. Great. What’s next?
2022 doesn’t look as busy as 2021 so far (but things might change).
However, there are at least four things that I am very much looking forward:

“A” Trio’s 20th anniversary

Did I ever say it here? From all the bands I am part of, “A” Trio is my all time favourite. And yes, it’s been twenty years that Sharif Sehnaoui, Raed Yassin and myself play together (how, where and when did we get that old by the way?). We will be celebrating throughout the year, with two tours (a small one in the USA and Canada in May and a longer one in Europe in September) and two new albums (a live that will be released in March on Unrock and a studio due on Al Maslakh in September).

Sampler/Sampled

This is the title of my new double LP trumpet solo that will be released on Morphine next month. It involves thirteen great musicians: Deena Abdelwahed, Rabih Beaini, Fari Bradley, Dieb 13, DJ Sniff, Gavsborg (Equiknoxx), Electric Indigo, Donzilla Lion (Nyege Nyege), Marina Rosenfeld, Microhm, Muqata’a, Bob Ostertag, Rrose.
Wait, it is a trumpet solo featuring thirteen other musicians?!? We’ll talk about it in due time.

Synesthesia with Splitter

Synesthesia is a live graphic conduction where I project images that are interpreted in realtime by an ensemble of improvisers. I presented it for the first time in 2018 at the Ultima festival in Oslo, and again at the last Irtijal festival in Lebanon in September 2021; each time i worked with different musicians in groups put together for the occasion, and the result was quite rewarding and encouraged me to pursue the idea. But since the beginning I was looking forward to work on it with an existing ensemble of improvisers, and I am very excited that this will finally happen this year, and with the mighty Splitter Orchestra that brings together 24 of Berlin’s best improvising musicians. We will work together for 5 days in July and present two live performances.

Website

Last but not least at all, I will very soon launch my new website (normally at the end of January).
Those who’ve been following me for a while must be laughing out loud; I’ve been announcing this new website here and there since 2007 or 2008, but until today all you can see if you type www.kerbaj.com is still my good old not-updated HTML website from 2004. The thing is so old that a web designer I showed it to recently made the following comment: “man this is so outdated that it looks like a contemporary website designed to reference a past long gone”.
If you feel nostalgic or if you miss the sound of the dial-up modem, you can still pay it a visit; you still have two weeks to try this voyage dans le temps.