Mazen Kerbaj

Lebanese trumpeter, visual artist, and cartoonist born in Beirut in 1975 who took up the instrument at eighteen and taught himself through free jazz and non-idiomatic improvisation. His first public performances took place in 2000, and he became a founding figure of the Lebanese experimental music scene, co-establishing the annual Irtijal improvisation festival in Beirut in 2001 and co-founding Al Maslakh, the first label for experimental music in the region, in 2005. During the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah War he improvised on his balcony as bombs fell, producing recordings of that confrontation. He is widely recognised as a key initiator of free improvisation practice in Lebanon.