"Harold Rubin (13 May 1932 - 1 April 2020) was a South African-born Israeli artist and free jazz clarinetist.

Rubin was born in Johannesburg, South Africa on 13 May 1932. He attended the Jeppe High School for Boys and received private instruction in the fine arts. Instructed in the classical clarinet as a teenager, he developed a fascination with jazz and began playing at the Skyline Night Club at eighteen. Enrolled as an architecture student at the University of the Witwatersrand, he completed his professional studies after further education in London.

Rubin's creative endeavours in South African society during the 1950s and 1960s dissented against the apartheid-era Afrikaner establishment by defying the country's racist social norms. Rubin organised his own jazz group in the 1950s, snuck into black townships, and played alongside black musicians. Rubin's visual artwork was first exhibited in 1956. Among Rubin's contributions to the South African fine arts in this spirit was the 1961 Sharpeville, a series of drawings devoted to the brutality of the Apartheid-era authorities during the Sharpeville massacre in 1960.

Rubin's most controversial project on the South African art scene of the 1960s was My Jesus, a provocative rendering of the crucifixion in which Jesus Christ appeared as a nude black figure with the head of a monster. The work contained the inscription "I forgive you O Lord, for you know not what you do" - a sardonically reversed "Father forgive them, for they know not what they do" - and depicted the naked figure with a slight hint of an erection. The controversial image was put on display alongside other anti-establishment works at a Johannesburg gallery in 1962. The exhibition caused such furore that the government sent the police to shut down the exhibition and referred its artwork for an examination by its censorship board. Rubin became the second South African to be charged with blasphemy.

Acquitted in court of the alleged blasphemy in March 1963, Rubin protested the repressive political environment by leaving the country for Israel. He quickly re-established himself in Tel Aviv, and was employed as an architect in the office of Arieh Sharon, on projects in Israel and abroad. He taught at an academy of architecture and design between the 1960s and his retirement in 1986.

Rubin began creating visual art as a critique and commentary on the militaristic aspect of Israeli society as early as the 1960s. The anti-war subject was a prime subject of Rubin's work during the 1980s - a decade witnessing the 1982 invasion of Lebanon and the tensions aroused by the increasingly visible peace movement, and marked by the creation of such works as The Anatomy of a War Widow (1984), a series of twenty-two black-and-white pictures. The caustic Homage to Rabbi Kahane, which portrayed the outspoken ultra-nationalist Rabbi Meir Kahane as a Jewish Nazi, was pulled off the wall by a Knesset member when hung at a Haifa gallery in 1985. The proceeds raised from an August 1987 exhibition and auction of art by Rubin and other Israeli artists at the Meimad Gallery in Tel Aviv were donated to a fund for educational activities and promotion of the values of democracy and freedom of speech dedicated to Emil Grunzweig, an Israeli teacher and Peace Now activist murdered in 1983 by a grenade thrown at a Jerusalem peace rally. Rubin's drawings and paintings have been exhibited in Israel, South Africa, the United States, and Germany since the 1960s.

Rubin returned to playing jazz in late 1979, having previously given up performance for more than a decade after his emigration from Africa. He became a founding member of the 1980s Zaviot jazz quartet, which recorded albums with the label Jazzis Records and performed at festivals and clubs in Israel and Europe until its break-up in 1989. Rubin's more recent appearances have included performances with Ariel Shibolet, Assif Tsahar, Daniel Sarid, Maya Dunietz, and Yoni Silver.

Awarded the Landau Award in tribute to his contributions to jazz music in 2008, he continued to play jazz with musicians of the younger generations in Tel Aviv.

Harold Rubin and his first wife, Riva Wainer, married in 1957, separated in the 1970s and divorced in 1975. Since 1976 he has been married to Miriam Kainy, a well-recognized Israeli dramatist particularly known for plays concerned with the subject of Jewish-Arab relations and feminist themes. His family included two sons from his first marriage, as well as one daughter and two stepdaughters from his second.

Rubin was an avowed atheist.

He died on 1 April 2020, aged 87."

"Barre Phillips (born October 27, 1934 in San Francisco, California) is a jazz bassist. A professional musician since 1960, he migrated to New York City in 1962, then to Europe in 1967.[1] Since 1972 he has been based in southern France where in 2014 founded the European Improvisation Center

He studied briefly in 1959 with S. Charles Siani, Assistant Principal Bassist with the San Francisco Symphony During the 1960s he recorded with (among others) Eric Dolphy, Jimmy Giuffre, Archie Shepp, Peter Nero, Attila Zoller, Lee Konitz and Marion Brown.[1]

Phillips' 1968 recording of solo bass improvisations, issued as Journal Violone in the USA, Unaccompanied Barre in England, and Basse Barre in France, is generally credited as the first solo bass record. A 1971 record with Dave Holland, Music from Two Basses, was probably the first record of improvised double bass duets.[2]

In the 1970s he was a member of the well-regarded and influential group The Trio with saxophonist John Surman and drummer Stu Martin.[1] In the 1980s and 1990s he played regularly with the London Jazz Composers Orchestra led by fellow bassist Barry Guy. He worked on soundtracks of the motion pictures Merry-Go-Round (1981), Naked Lunch (1991, together with Ornette Coleman) and Alles was baumelt, bringt Glück! (2013).[3]

He has also worked with (among many others) bassists Peter Kowald and Joëlle Léandre, guitarist Derek Bailey, clarinetists Theo Jörgensmann and Aurélien Besnard, saxophonists Peter Brötzmann, Evan Parker and Joe Maneri, and pianist Paul Bley.

Barre is the father of rock guitarist Jay Crawford from the band Bomb, of the bassist Dave Phillips and of singer Claudia Phillips, who was a one-hit wonder in France in 1987 with "Quel souci La Boétie". "

"Tatsuya Nakatani. Acoustic Sound Artist, Master Percussionist. b. 1970, Osaka Japan

Tatsuya Nakatani is an acoustic sound artist and master percussionist originally from Osaka, Japan. He has released over eighty recordings in North America and Europe. Residing in the USA since the mid-nineties, he has performed countless solo percussion concerts and has collaborated with hundreds of artists in international music festivals, university concert halls, art museums and independent venues. Infamous for his constant touring, Nakatani criss-crosses the country every year inspiring audiences with his pioneering sound. In addition to his solo performances, he conducts the Nakatani Gong Orchestra (NGO), a mobile community engagement project which organizes local ensembles performing on multiple bowed gongs.Nakatani teaches master classes and workshops at universities, giving students an opportunity to share his unique musical approach and philosophy for creating visceral, non-linear music.

He has created his own instrumentation, effectively inventing many instruments and extended techniques. Utilizing drums, gongs, cymbals, singing bowls, wooden sticks, metal objects, and the bows and mallets he handcrafts in his Kobo; he creates an intense, intuitively primitive, expressive music that defies genre. His work references improvised-experimental music, free jazz, and noise, while still retaining the sense of space and beauty found in traditional Japanese folk music."