Published
STARRY NIGHT
L’album de la revue numéro 2 L’autre musique, consacrée aux pratiques artistiques circonstancielles.
a minimalistic improvisation by:
mazen kerbaj / trumpet
the israeli air force / bombsrecorded by mazen kerbaj on the balcony of his flat in beirut,
on the night of 15th to 16th of july 2006.
Starry Night is a sound piece recorded in 2006 during the bombing of Beirut by the Israeli Air Force.
On the night of 15-16 July 2006, with bombs falling over the city, Mazen set up his minidisc recorder on the balcony of his Beirut apartment and started recording, while the city was being bombarded outside. The result was an acoustic encounter bordering on the absurd: a duet between the improvised sounds of the trumpet and live bomb explosions.Starry Night was one of Kerbaj’s first responses to the 33-day Israeli War and is part of a broader chronicle recording more solo trumpets, TV news, phone calls with friends, and other city bombings, also launching his first blog: a daily visual diary recounting the conflict.
The piece serves as a time capsule, capturing the sonic landscape of a home during live bombardment.
In a sobering parallel, Mazen initiated another visual diary in response to the recent Israeli massacres in Gaza, conveying the devastating emotional weight of bearing witness to ongoing events. Like Starry Night, his diary extends beyond the individual, wherein the artist’s own home becomes reflective of the collective experience, mirroring the current reality unfolding in Gaza.
Mazen Kerbaj’s most (in)famous piece to date is Starry Night, a piece he recorded on the balcony of his flat in beirut during the Israeli-Lebanese war of July 2006, while the Israeli airforce was dropping bombs on the city. Dubbed by the artist as a piece for trumpet and bombs, it is nevertheless a trumpet solo piece, as well as a piece of sonic journalism (as described by Peter Cusack).