It is also in 2000 that he plays for the first time in concert, in the Strike's pub in Beirut. This concert, a duo with Lebanese sax player Christine Sehnaoui, is probably the first improvised concert in the Middle East. In 2001, together with guitarist Sharif Sehnaoui , he creates the MILL association that curates since IRTIJAL an annual international festival for free music in Beirut as well as various concerts and events (IRTIJAL saw over the years some great improvisers like Fred Van Hove, Johannes Bauer, Lê Quan Ninh, Franz Hautzinger...). In august 2002, together with Sharif Sehnaoui and double bass player Raed Yassine he recorded the album A published by La CD-Thèque, Beirut. After meeting Franz Hautzinger by chance in Lebanon in February 2003, they played in duo in Beirut and in Paris and in trio with Japanese laptop player Taku Unami at the IRTIJAL 2003 festival. Then they were joined by Sharif Sehnaoui and Helge Hinteregger to form Oriental Space quartet that played in Nickelsdorf, Berlin, Vienna and Klagenfurt. A recording of this group is avilable on the Austrian label aRtonal, and Abu Tarek, a recording of the duo Hautzinger/Kerbaj is available on the Portugese label Creative Sources.

In 2005, Kerbaj releases 2 new albums on the Lebanese newly born label Al Maslakh (The Slaughterhouse), one in solo and the other with Rouba3i quartet. Between 2000 and 2006, Mazen Kerbaj played in solo and various groups in a lot of venues in Lebanon, Syria, France, Austria, Germany, Netherlands, Belgium, Spain, Portugal, Switzerland, UK, and the USA. Regular and occasional partners includes: Sharif Sehnaoui , Christine Sehnaoui, Raed Yassine, Charbel Haber, Jad Balaben, Jassem Hindi, Franz Hautzinger , Helge Hinteregger, Lê Quan Ninh, Bertrand Denzler, Stéphane Rives, Edward Perraud, Taku Unami, Guillermo Gregorio, Gene Coleman, Toshimaru Nakamura, Michael Zerang, Fred Lonberg-Holm, Jim Baker, Jack Wright, Mike Bullok, Vic Rawlings, David Stackenas, Martin Küchen, Axel Dörner, Tatsuya Nakatani, Ricardo Arias, Jason Kahn. http://www.kerbaj.com

Ignaz Schick [sound artist, composer, performer, turntablist] (born 1972) http://www.soundcloud.com/ignazschick
Turntablist, sound artist, performer, composer and visual artist. In his youth he studied the saxophone and performed in free jazz and avant rock bands. At the same time he was getting obsessed with multitrack tape machines, record players and effect boxes and he started experimenting with many different instruments and sound making devices.

After college he briefly studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich and worked for several years as an assistent for contemporary composer Josef Anton Riedl. Since 1995 he lives & works in Berlin where he became an active and integral force of the so-called "Berlin Nouvelle Vague" and the blossoming "experimental" scene. He has been also prolific as curator (Festival für Andere Musik, Erase & Reset, Time Shifts, TITO, Echtzeitmusiktage 2010, ...) and runs the experimental label Zarek. Schick has toured worldwide solo or with groups like Perlonex, Phosphor, Berlin Sound Connective, Nighthawk Kitchen, Tree People, Splitter Orchestra, Ilog and many more (...). He has released on several labels like Absinth, Boomslang Records, Charhizmha, Irrah, Le Petit Mignon, Mikroton, Nexsound, Non Visual Objects, Potlatch, Staalplaat and his own imprint Zarek and collaborated with more than a hundred international sonic artists - amongst others with Mwata Bowden, Don Cherry, Sven-Ake Johansson, Paul Lovens, Toshi Nakamura, Charlemagne Palestine, Andrea Parkins, Keith Rowe, Akira Sakata, Matthias Spahlinger or Martin Tetreault.

In parallel to his experimental sound and performance practice he has been making sound installations, experimental objects, visual collages, text scores, concrete poetry, graphic scores and drawings. Since 2012 he focusses on conceptual composition and experimental radio pieces. In parallel he has started several new projects with a younger generation of Berlin experimentalists (Ilog, Yemen Breakfast, Radio Nightmares, Hawking, Overdue, KUDU, …). He also frequently collaborates with Emilio Gordoa, Nicola Hein, Achim Kaufmann & Christian Lillinger and has founded the 9-piece workshop ensemble Circuit Training (w/ Tom Arthurs, Benjamin Weidekamp, Eliad Wagner, Marta Zapparoli, Achim Kaufmann, Klaus Kuervers, Emilio Gordoa, Alexandre Babel) which focusses on the realization of conceptual graphic & verbally instructed scores. For 2017 he has received two different travel & research stipends for South-East-Asia and Los Angeles for writing new pieces and researching the local scenes.