Last Thursday we cancelled the first of three concerts that were to take pace in my solo exhibition at the IFA Galerie Berlin. The series was titled Mazen Kerbaj invites X plus one, where I would invite a close collaborator from Berlin, and ask her/him to bring along a guest to play a trio together. Needless to say the guest would remain unknown to me and to the audience until the night of the concert. This idea was already here when I moved to Berlin in 2015, and i always thought of it as a way to meet new interesting musicians in a city where there are so many of them.
I was quite excited to finally put it in practice.
My first guest for this series was the fantastic musician, performer, artist and friend Ute Wassermann. I’ve been trying to find a way to “replace” this gig since I knew it was cancelled, but I couldn’t find something convincing, until I came up with a setup that permit to be together without delving into “unnatural” duos played through respective screens: I record solo pieces while listening to the other musician’s solo through headphones. The result are solo pieces with a structure inspired by another musician’s one; it is as if the other musician is whispering to me what to play in realtime. I do not try to mimic the music i listen to though – that would be quite boring for me and for the listener – but rather to play with another musician’s pace and sensibility.
It is both an homage and a an open letter to a close collaborator that I cannot meet for the time being.
I hope you will enjoy this first attempt recorded while listening to Strange Song 6 from the album Strange Songs by Ute Wassermann. You can find two takes on Bandcamp and one of them is available also as a movie on Vimeo (you can check it below too).
Last but not least: Ute and myself are trying to find a way to make a collaboration from afar happen. More news on this as soon as they come.