"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."

"Jean Claude Jones was born in Sfax, Tunisia and moved to France as a young child. As a teen, he taught himself simultaneously to play lead and bass guitar. At the age of 17 he began working in professional pop and jazz bands. In 1978 he moved to the US to pursue formal music studies, graduating from the Berklee College of Music in Boston, where he majored in jazz guitar. He continued his studies at the Music Institute of Technology in Los Angeles. In 1983 he emigrated to Israel, where he became a key player on the newly developing jazz scene. Several years later he made a definitive switch from guitar to double bass, and became involved in free improvised music. In time, he added electronics and computer-manipulated sounds to his musical arsenal. In 2016 because of a serious illness he returned the guitar as his main instrument.The driving force behind his work is "finding my space."

JC Jones is an esteemed music educator, and served as chair of the Jazz Department at the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance between 1996 and 2000. He has performed and recorded with many leading international and Israeli musicians, dancers, poets, and vocal artists, including Stan Getz, Red Rodney, and Dave Liebman. Since the 1990s he has appeared with John Zorn, Anthony Coleman, Ned Rothenberg, Joey Baron, Marc Ribot, Ikue Mori, Mike Patton, Damon Smith, Joelle Leandre, Slava Ganelin, Steve Horenstein, Albert Beger, Arkady Gotesman, Avishai Cohen, Ariel Shibolet, Harold Rubin, Victoria Hanna, Josef Sprinzak, Amos Hetz, Anat Shamgar , Felix Ruckert, Dieter Hautkamp, Julyen Hamilton, Mark Dresser, Barre Phillips, Bert Turetzky, Irina Kalina Goudeva.

In 2004 he founded his label Kadima Collective Recordings.

Some of JC's major projects include Deep Tones for Peace 2009 telematic performances, the Kadima Triptych Series (cds/dvds/texts featuring double-bass masters), Myelination (the myelin chemical sounds and improvised music), and The Temperamental Duo, a collaborative work on Lydian + Explorations with composer/reeds player Steve Horenstein.

Since 2016 he has been working with lap-style prepared and sometimes prepared spanish guitar, in multiple collaborations and recordings with several eminent musicians. Works includes Wild Guitar Musings 2016 solo guitar, Keep on Dancing, duos recordings with percussionists Haim Peskoff, Oren Fried Denis Fournier, and JC on guitar, Sick Puppies In Love duos with vocalist Anat Pick 2016, Drones 2017, La Sprezzatura Ensemble 2018, Give it your all - Wild Guitar Musings 2018."

"Ariel Shibolet Born in1972 in Israel. Played the cello and had classical education in his youth. Started playing the saxophone in 1992. Member of the "Kadima Collective" for improvised music and the "Tel-Aviv Art Ensemble". Organizer and co curator of the monthly Tel Aviv Meetings at evontin 7.

Performs regularly in Israel, the United States and Europe. published his first cd at "Leo REcords" and since then another dozen collaborating with israely and international musicians.. His CDs recordings and concerts are remarkably reviewed world wide.

played at the "total Music Meeting" Berlin 2007 and 2008, and at the "Moers Festival" 2010 among other musical events in europe and the us and israeli festival such as: "whight night" in tel aviv, the tel aviv jazz festival, Hagad festival and more.

created improvised music for animation films and documetry by Gerd Conradt.

taught improvised music to children in several projects in berlin 2008-2012. the 2008 group performed at the "Total music meeting 2008", the 2011 project was recorded and will be published as a cd at "nur nicht nur" - a German label for improvised music, sumer 2013.

published his method for teaching improvised music to children in "expressiv & explorohrativ", a book about the use of improvised music with children.

Over these years played with

Birgit Ulher (GER), Damon Smith (USA), Joelle Leandre (FRA), Jhon Butcher (GBR), Eddie Prevost (GBR), Martin Blume(GER), Phil Waxmann(GBR), Marcio Mattos(GBR), Wolfgang Fuchs (GER), Sophie Angiel (FRA), Chriss Cutler (GBR), Mazen Kerbaj(LEB Scott R.Looney (USA), Jen Baker (Aurora Josephson (USA), Jerome Bryerton (USA), Dror Fauler (SWE), Klaus Janek (GER), Chad Taylor (USA), Martin Klapper (CEZ), Peter Friss nielsen (DAN), Christer Irgens-Moller (DAN), John Dikeman (Egypt), Reut Regev (USA), Yigal Phoni(USA), Olga Magieres (DAN), Niels Winter (DAN),

Mark Oleary and many more...

Israeli musicians:

Haggai Fershtman, Nori Jacoby, Jean Claude Jones, Harold Rubin, Rran Zachs, Alex Drull, Yoram Lachish, Daniel Hofman, Shmil Frenkel, Rami Gabai, Albert Beger, Yoni Silver, Ronny Brener, Michel Mayer, Adi Snir, Offer Bymel, Eran Zachs, Tom Soloveizic' Daniel Sarid, Dana Waxman, Yonatan Avishay, Eitan Radushinski, Shlomi Shaban, Yuval Mesner, Adi Hershko, Anat Pick, Karni Postel, Maya Dunitz, Steve Horenstein, Yiftach Kadan and more...."

"Albert Beger (born 1959) is a saxophonist, flutist and an academy lecturer from Israel. Beger is a composer in the fields of post-bop, hard-bop, free-jazz and avant-garde music.

Albert Beger was born in the city of Istanbul, Turkey, in 1959 and immigrated to Israel with his parents when he was three years old.

From an early age, he was exposed to the cultural fusion in the new born state of Israel, a mixture of Eastern-Europe, Western-Europe and Arabic food, clothes and music.

In his youth, he was mainly listening to the pop/rock music of the sixties, and got carried away in the prog-rock wave of early seventies.

Upon listening to Jethro Tull's music for the first time, and hearing Ian Anderson's flute - Albert was immediately attracted to the sound that was produced by the instrument and during his army service he got himself a flute and started learning the instrument by himself.

Post his army service, Albert studied classical music with legendary Israeli flutist Uri Teplitz, while discovering the tenor saxophone in the age of 25-26. According to Albert, the flute couldn't carry the energy that he wanted to produce and the tenor fitted right for this need.

AT the age of 27, Albert received a scholarship from the Berklee School of Music in Boston and went to study in the prestigious institute for three years.

This is time when he was introduced with the more free shapes of jazz, and was introduced to the music of Albert Ayler, Coltrane, Cecil Taylor and Art Ensemble of Chicago.

In 1995 Albert released his debut album The Primitive, a collection of early compositions that gathered together to make a surprising debut.

This Life followed in 1997 and was released in Israel by the biggest record label in the country NMC records, and got a distribution deal from Columbia Records.

Art Of The Moment followed in 2000, featuring Menachem Zibziner on Guitars, Gabi Meir on Bass and Amir David on drums.

In 2003, a turning point in Albert's career, he was signed to the new label Earsay's Jazz, by producer Yossi Acchoti, with a request to follow Albert for future albums to come.

With Earsay's Jazz, Albert released Hevel Havalim in 2003, with his new trio (including Gabriel Meyer on bass and Hagai Fershtman on drums), and Listening in 2004 with his quintet (the former album trio augmented by Yoni Silver on alt saxophone and bass clarinet, and Yiftach Kadan on guitar).

In 2005, Albert received his first formal recognition from the country, when he won the Landau Award for Performing Arts. In a jazz festival that year in Tel Aviv, Albert shared the stage with two of the most dominant figures in the free jazz world - Hamid Drake (drums) and William Parker (bass).

Albert, Drake and Parker, booked a studio session and recorded couple of Albert's compositions, and the session was released in a two volume album called Evolving Silence (released 2005 and 2006).

In 2008, Albert had released his eight album Big Mother. Big Mother dealt with the topic of ecology and the danger human beings cause the planet. This album was the first to include a pianist (played by Aviran Ben Naim).

The year after, Albert received Israel's highest honor for musicians, the prestigious Prime Minister's Award for Composers.

In 2010, Albert had signed a record deal with the relatively new label Anova Music, and released Peacemaker, a six piece conceptual suit."

"John Martin Tchicai (April 28, 1936 - October 8, 2012) was a Danish free jazz saxophonist and composer.

After moving to New York City in 1963, Tchicai joined Archie Shepp's New York Contemporary Five and the New York Art Quartet. He played on John Coltrane's Ascension, and Albert Ayler's New York Eye and Ear Control, both influential free jazz recordings.

Tchicai was born in Copenhagen, Denmark, to a Danish mother and a Congolese father. The family moved to Aarhus, where he studied violin in his youth, and in his mid-teens began playing clarinet and alto saxophone, focusing on the latter. By the late 1950s he was travelling around northern Europe, playing with many musicians.

Following his work in New York, Tchicai returned to Denmark in 1966, and shortly thereafter focused most of his time on music education. He formed the small orchestra Cadentia Nova Danica with Danish and other European musicians; this group collaborated with Musica Elettronica Viva and performed in multi-media events. Tchicai was a founding member of Amsterdam's Instant Composers Pool in 1968, and in 1969 took part in the recording of John Lennon and Yoko Ono's Unfinished Music No.2: Life with the Lions.

On August 30, 1975, Tchicai's appearance at the Willisau Jazz Festival was recorded and released later that year as Willi The Pig. On this record, he plays with Swiss pianist Irène Schweizer. Tchicai returned to a regular gigging and recording schedule in the late 1970s. In the early 1980s he switched to the tenor saxophone as his primary instrument. In 1990 he was awarded a lifetime grant from the Danish Ministry of Culture.

Tchicai and his wife relocated to Davis, California, in 1991, where he led several ensembles. He was awarded a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship in 1997. He was a member of Henry Kaiser and Wadada Leo Smith's "Yo Miles" band, a loose aggregation of musicians exploring Miles Davis's electric period.

Since 2001 he had been living near Perpignan in southern France. On June 11, 2012, he suffered a brain hemorrhage in an airport in Barcelona, Spain. He was recovering and had canceled all appearances when he died in a Perpignan hospital on October 8, 2012, aged 76."