Mazen Kerbaj

Mazen Kerbaj (born Beirut, 1975) is a Lebanese jazz and free improvisation trumpeter and comic book artist. Kerbaj grew up in Beirut during the Lebanese Civil War, and began playing free jazz in local clubs following the reestablishment of cultural life in the 1990s. His first public performances took place in 2000, started his own record label, and toured internationally, playing with musicians such as Michael Zerang, Mats Gustafsson, Guillermo Gregorio, and Fred Lonberg-Holm in Europe and the United States. He also issued his own comics in the 2000s, which are published on a blog. In July 2006, he recorded himself playing live during the 2006 Lebanon War with the sounds of bombs exploding and car sirens wailing.In 2015, he became artist-in-residence at the Berlin collective DAAD.