Harold Rubin facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Harold Rubin
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Harold Rubin at Levontin 7, Tel Aviv, 2013. Photo by Mark Segal.
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| Background information | |
| Born | 13 May 1932 Johannesburg, South Africa |
| Died | 1 April 2020 (aged 87) |
| Genres | Jazz |
| Occupation(s) | Musician |
| Instruments | Clarinet |
Harold Rubin (13 May 1932 – 1 April 2020) was a South African-born Israeli artist and free jazz clarinetist.
Life and career
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.
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. 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. In 1976, he got 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.
See also
In Spanish: Harold Rubin para niños
