Difference between revisions 434776143 and 434776323 on enwiki

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{{Infobox Person
| name= = Gilad Atzmon<br />{{lang|he|גלעד עצמון}}
|image=Gilad Atzmon.jpg
| image_size = 180px
| caption = Atzmon in concert, February 2007
| birth_name= = Gilad Atzmon
| birth_date = {{Birth date and age|mf=yes|1963|6|9}}
| birth_place = [[Tel Aviv]], [[Israel]]
| residence = London
| nationality = [[Israel]]i and British<ref name="St%252E%2520. Clair"/>
| known_for = Music, political activism
| education = [[Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance|Rubin Academy of Music]], [[University of Essex]]
| occupation = Musician
| website = [http://www.gilad.co.uk/ www.gilad.co.uk]
}}
'''Gilad Atzmon''' ({{lang-he|גלעד עצמון}}; born June 9, 1963) is an [[Israel]]i-born British [[jazz]] [[saxophone|saxophonist]], novelist, political activist and writer.<ref name="CryFreedom"/><ref name="gilchrist222"/><ref name=Lewis%252F/><ref name="Rizzo">Mary Rizzo, [http://www.counterpunch.org/atzmon06172005.html "Who's Afraid of Gilad Atzmon?"], [[CounterPunch]], June 17, 2005.</ref>

He is almost as big a fascist and anti-Semite as Rol.land Ran.ce⏎
⏎
⏎
⏎
Atzmon's album ''Exile'' was BBC jazz album of the year in 2003.<ref name="JazzHot">Gilad Atzmon,[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/music/rockandjazzmusic/3647173/How-jazz-got-hot-again.html How jazz got hot again], ''The Daily Telegraph'', October 13, 2005</ref> Playing over 100 dates a year,<ref name=Lewis%252F/> he has been called "surely the hardest-gigging man in British jazz."<ref>John Bungey [http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/music/cd_reviews/article5852689.ece "Gilad Atzmon: In Loving Memory of America",] ''The Times'', March 6, 2009</ref> His albums, of which he has recorded nine to date,<ref name=Lewis%252F/> often explore the music of the Middle East and political themes. He has described himself as a "devoted political artist."<ref name="CryFreedom">Stuart Nicholson,[http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3724/is_200308/ai_n9275160  Cry freedom], [[The Spectator]]  August 9, 2003.</ref> He supports the [[Palestinian right of return]] and the [[one-state solution]] in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.<ref name="Rizzo"/> 

His criticisms of [[Zionism]], [[Jewish identity]], and [[Judaism]], as well as his controversial views on [[The Holocaust]] and [[Jewish history]] have led to allegations of [[antisemitism]] from both [[Zionists]] and [[Anti-Zionism|anti-Zionists]].   A profile in ''[[The Guardian]]'' in 2009 which described Atzmon as "one of London's finest saxophonists" stated: "It is Atzmon's blunt anti-Zionism rather than his music that has given him an international profile, particularly in the Arab world, where his essays are widely read."<ref name=Lewis%252F/>

==Early life==
Atzmon was born a [[secular Jew]] in [[Tel Aviv]], and trained at the [[Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance|Rubin Academy of Music]] in [[Jerusalem]].<ref name="GMF-GA">{{cite web
|url=http://www.globalmusicfoundation.org/people.html#GA
|title=Gilad Atzmon
|accessdate=October 28, 2008
|work=People
|publisher=Global Music Foundation
}}
</ref> His service as a [[paramedic]] in the [[Israeli Defense Forces]] during [[1982 Lebanon War|the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon]] caused him to reach the conclusion that "I was part of a colonial state, the result of plundering and [[1948 Palestinian exodus| ethnic cleansing]]."<ref name="St%252E%2520. Clair">{{cite web
|url=http://www.counterpunch.org/stclair07192003.html
|title=You Must Leave Home, Again: Gilad Atzmon's "A Guide to the Perplexed"
|accessdate=October 28, 2008
|last=St. Clair
|first=Jeffery
|authorlink=Jeffrey St. Clair
|date=July 19, 2003
(contracted; show full)as inspired by the work of [[Ronnie Scott]] and [[Tubby Hayes]] and regarded London as "the Mecca of Jazz."<ref name="JazzHot"/> He also was influenced to become a jazz musician by the work of [[Charlie Parker]], in particular ''[[Charlie Parker with Strings]]'' recorded in 1949. Atzmon said of the album that he "loved the way the music is both beautiful and subversive – they way he basks in the strings but also fights against them."<ref name=Lewis
%252F/> He worked with top bands as a musical producer.<ref>Barnaby Smith, [http://www.tourdates.co.uk/LondonTourdates/issue-007/2007/10/05/222-Sax-With-An-Axe-To-Grind Sax With An Axe To Grind], [http://www.tourdates.co.uk/ London Tour Dates], October 5, 2007.</ref>

In 1994,<ref name="RainLore%2520  bio">{{cite web
|url=http://www.rainloresworldofmusic.net/Artists/Artists_A-D/Atzmon_Gilad.html
|title=Profile – Gilad Atzmon
|accessdate=October 28, 2008
|date=March 21, 2003
|publisher=Rainlore's World of Music
}}
</ref> Atzmon emigrated from Israel to London, where he attended the [[University of Essex]]<ref>[http://www.essex.ac.uk/news/2007/nr20071214.htm University of Essex news release],
Dec 14, 2007 notes Atzmon is a "graduate."</ref> and earned a Masters degree in Philosophy.<ref name="CryFreedom"/> He has lived there since,<ref name="gilchrist222">{{cite news|url=http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/features/39I-thought-music-could-heal.3804991.jp?CommentPage=1&CommentPageLength=1000|title='I thought music could heal the wounds of the past. I may have got that wrong'|last=Gilchrist|first=Jim|date=February 22, 2008|work=[[The Scotsman]]|accessdate=March 21, 2009}}</ref> becoming a British citizen in 2002.<ref name="St%252E%2520. Clair"/>

==Music==
While Atzmon's main instrument is the [[alto saxophone]], he also plays [[soprano saxophone|soprano]], [[tenor saxophone|tenor]] and [[baritone saxophone]]s and [[clarinet]], [[Sol (instrument)|sol]], [[zurna]] and [[flute]].<ref name="GMF-GA" /> Atzmon's jazz style has been described as [[bebop]]/[[hard bop]], with forays into [[free jazz]] and [[Swing music|swing]], and seemingly inspired by [[John Coltrane]] and [[Miles Davis]].<ref name="RainLore%2520  bio" /> Atzmon sometimes plays the alto and soprano sax simultaneously.<ref name="RainLore%2520  bio" />

Atzmon's works have also explored the music of the Middle East, [[North Africa]], and [[Eastern Europe]].<ref name="Atzmonhomepage">{{cite web
|url=http://www.gilad.co.uk/index.html
|title=GILAD ATZMON – MUSICIAN, COMPOSER, PRODUCER, EDUCATOR, WRITER 
|accessdate=October 28, 2008
|last=Atzmon
|first=Gilad
|year=2007
|publisher=Gilad Atzmon
}}
</ref> Atzmon told ''The Guardian'' that he draws on [[Arabic music]] which he says cannot be notated like western music but must be internalised, which he calls "reverting to the primacy of the ear." Atzmon's musical method has been to play with notions of cultural identity, flirting with genres such as tango and klezmer as well as various Arabic, Balkan, Gypsy and Ladino folk forms. Atzmon's recordings deliberately differ from his live shows. "I don't think that anyone can sit in a house, at home, and listen to me play a full-on bebop solo. It's too intense. My albums need to be less manic."<ref name=Lewis%252F/>

Atzmon has created the "[[Benny Hill]]-like alter ego – a fanatical Zionist" Artie Fishel, on the album ''Artie Fishel & the Promised Band'', which has been described as "musical anarchy."<ref name="BBC-AF">{{cite web
|url=http://www.bbc.co.uk/music/release/grp2/
|title=Gilad Atzmon: Artie Fishel And The Promised Band
|accessdate=October 28, 2008
|last=Shackleton
|first=Kathryn 
(contracted; show full)
[[BBC News]], January 25, 2007.</ref> He has also recorded and performed with [[Shane McGowan]], [[Robbie Williams]], [[Sinéad O'Connor]], [[Robert Wyatt]] and [[Paul McCartney]].<ref name="GMF-GA" /><ref name="Atzmonhomepage" /> He has recorded two albums with Robert Wyatt, who describes him as "one of the few musical geniuses I've ever met".<ref name=Lewis
%252F/>

Atzmon has collaborated, recorded and performed with musicians from all around the world, including the Palestinian singer, [[Reem Kelani]], Tunisian singer and [[oud]] player [[Dhafer Youssef]], violinist [[Marcel Mamaliga]], accordion player [[Romano Viazzani]], bassist [[Yaron Stavi]], violinist and trumpet-violin player, [[Dumitru Ovidiu Fratila]], and [[Guillermo Rozenthuler]] on vocals.<ref name="RainLore%2520  bio" />

Atzmon founded the '''Orient House Ensemble''' band in London in the 1990s and toured with them in 2007.<ref name="Atzmonhomepage" /> The band includes Asaf Sirkis on drums, Yaron Stavi on bass and Frank Harrison on keyboard.<ref name="Atzmonhomepage" /> It has produced five albums in eight years.<ref name=Shackleton>Kathryn Shackleton, [http://www.bbc.co.uk/music/release/5vp2/ Gilad Atzmon & The Orient House Ensemble, (contracted; show full)
:''[[EjazzNews]]'': "For sheer improvisational fireworks, quirky humour and genre-defying invention, one will be hard-pressed to find a bandleader as unique as Gilad Atzmon." ("EjazzNews," September 2008)<ref>John Stevenson, [http://www.ejazznews.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=News
%2526amp%253Bfile%253Darticle%2526amp%253Bsid%253D9791%2526amp%253Bmode%253Dthread%2526amp%253Border%253D0%2526amp%253Bthold%253D&file=article&sid=9791&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0 Gilad Atzmon liberates the Americans: Orient House Ensemble, Ronnie Scott’s London, August 30, 2008], EJazzNews.com, September 1, 2008.</ref>
:[[BBC]]: "...the OHE is finding its voice in an increasingly subtle blend of East and West, that’s brutal and beautiful."<ref name=Shackleton%252F/>

In February 2009 ''[[The Guardian]]'' music critic [[John Fordham]] reviewed Atzmon's newest album ''In loving memory of America'' which Atzmon describes as "a memory of America I had cherished in my mind for many years". It includes five standards and six originals "inspired by the sumptuous harmonies and impassioned sax-playing of [[Charlie Parker|(Charlie) Parker]]'s late-40s recordings with classical strings".<ref>John Fordham, [http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2009/feb/27/gilad-atzmon-loving-memory-america Gilad Atzmon: In Loving Memory of America], ''[[The Guardian]]'', February 27, 2009.</ref>

While the music journalist John Lewis praises much of Atzmon's work, he notes that "trenchant politics often sit uneasily alongside music, particularly when that music is instrumental." Lewis criticized his 2006 comedy klezmer project, ''Artie Fishel and the Promised Band'', as "a clumsy satire on what he regards as the artificial nature of Jewish identity politics."<ref name=Lewis%252F/>

===Awards===
Atzmon was the recipient of the [[HMV]] Top Dog Award at the [[Birmingham International Jazz Festival]] in 1996–1998.<ref name="RainLore%2520  bio" /> Gilad Atzmon's ''Exile'' was [[BBC]] jazz album of the year in 2003.<ref>[http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/low/entertainment/3107607.stm Jazz winners span generations], [[BBC]], July 30, 2003.</ref>

==Novels==
Atzmon's novels have been published in 22 languages. His first novel ''[[A Guide to the Perplexed]]'', published in 2001, is set in a future where by 2052 Israel has been replaced by a Palestinian state for 40 years. It largely reviews memoirs of the alienated Israeli Gunther Wunker’s rise to fame as a "peepologist," or voyeur. The perplexed are defined as "the unthinking Chosen" who "cling to clods of earth that don't belong to them." The novel excoriates what it describes as the commercialization of the Holocaust and "argues that the Holocaust is invoked as a kind of reflexive propaganda designed to shield the Zionist state from responsibility for any transgression against Palestinians."<ref name="St%252E%2520. Clair"/> A reviewer for ''[[The Independent]]'' wrote that "Those who still thrill to the pages of Sixties underground "comix" may find some of this amusing, however laboured. Yet even those semi-sympathetic to its politics will find it cheap and "provocative" in the worst possible sense." He also wrote that the book has "just enough connection with reality to give it a certain unsettling power" but concludes "His writing, alas, repres(contracted; show full)lt;ref>Examples of Gilad Atzmon in [[CounterPunch]]: [http://www.counterpunch.org/atzmon08282003.html Collective Self-Deception: The Most Common Mistakes of Israelis], August 28, 2003; [http://www.counterpunch.org/atzmon07102009.html The Left and Islam: Thinking Outside of the Secular Box], July 10–12, 2009.</ref>  ''[[Al-Arab]] online'',<ref>Atzmon articles published by ''Al-Arab online'' include [http://www.alarabonline.org/english/display.asp?fname=
%255C2010%255C04%255C04-28%255Czopinionz%255C960%252Ehtm%2526amp%253Bdismode%253Dx%2526amp%253Bts%253D28-4-2010%25252015%253A35%253A26 Welcome to the Jewish Comedy Club], April 28, 2010 and [http://www.alarabonline.org/english/display.asp?fname=%255C2010%255C05%255C05-05%255Czculturez%255C970%252Ehtm%2526amp%253Bdismode%253Dx%2526amp%253Bts%253D5-5-2010%25252016%253A19%253A\2010\04\04-28\zopinionz\960.htm&dismode=x&ts=28-4-2010%2015:35:26 Welcome to the Jewish Comedy Club], April 28, 2010 and [http://www.alarabonline.org/english/display.asp?fname=\2010\05\05-05\zculturez\970.htm&dismode=x&ts=5-5-2010%2016:19:53 Not Much Time Remains for Israel- A Film Review], May 5, 2010.</ref> ''[[Uruknet]]'',<ref>Gilad Atzmon, [http://uruknet.info/?p=m31096&s1=h1 Purim Special, From Esther to AIPAC], Uruknet, March 3, 2007.</ref> ''[[Middle East Online]]'',<ref>Examples of Gilad Atzmon in ''Middle East Online:'' [http://www.middle-east-online.com/english/culture/?id=34492 Vengeance, Barbarism and Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds], Se(contracted; show full)

Atzmon has defined himself variously as a "secular Jew",<ref name="gilchrist222"/> a "proud self-hating Jew",<ref name=Panayides
%252F/><ref name="Gibson">Martin Gibson, [http://www.thetruthseeker.co.uk/article.asp?ID=10102 No choice but to speak out – Israeli musician ‘a proud self-hating Jew’], originally published in Gisborne Herald, January 23, 2009.</ref> an "ex-Jew"<ref>Gilad Atzmon, [http://www.gilad.co.uk/writings/a-new-jewish-goal-by-gilad-atzmon.html A New Jewish Goal], at his personal web site.</ref> and "a Hebrew-speaking Palestinian."<ref name="gilchrist222"/> Atzmon told interviewer [[Theo Panayides]] “I don’t write about politics, I write about ethics. I write about Identity. I write a lot about the [[Jewish Question]] – because I was born in the Jew-land, and my whole process in maturing into an adult was involved with the realisation that my people are living on stolen land.”<ref name=Panayides%252F/>  Atzmon has said that his experience in the military of “my people destroying other people left a big scar” and led to his decision that he was deluded about Zionism. He has condemned “Jewishness” as "very much a supremacist, racist tendency". He states that "I don't have anything against Jews in particular and you won't find that in my writings."<ref name="gilchrist222"/> 

(contracted; show full) and this includes me of course. In short, you are either a racist which I am not or have an ideological disagreement with Zionism, which I have."<ref name=1001Lies>Gilad Atzmon, [http://gilad.co.uk/html%20files/1001lies.html 1001 Lies About Gilad Atzmon], at his personal web site.</ref> In 2009 Atzmon debated [[David Aaronovitch]] and [[Nick Cohen]] on the topic of “Anti-Semitism – Alive and Well in Europe?” at the 2009 [[Sunday Times]] Oxford Literary Festival.<ref name=OxfordAnnounce
%252F/><ref>Dina Oma, [http://www.emiratestribune.com/news/newsfull.php?newid=227617  What did we learn about anti-Semitism?], ''Emirates Tribune'', April 13, 2009.</ref><ref>Gilad Atzmon, [http://atlanticfreepress.com/news/1/9110-gilad-atzmon-aaronovitchs-tantrum-and-the-demolition-of-jewish-power.html Aaronovitch's Tantrum and the Demolition of Jewish Power], reprinted in Atlantic Free Press with links to audio, April 9, 2009.</ref><ref>David Aaronovitch(contracted; show full)html Gilad Atzmon: Lieberman and the Jewish Political Continuum], at Gilad Atzmon's web site, October 10, 2010: "whilst we understand that Zionists insist on operating within a ‘Jews only’ club -- the Jewish anti Zionists are apparently not much different. For some reason, the Jewish opponents of Israel also insist on operating in what seem to be just more Judeo-centric tribal dissident political cells."</ref> And he has been defended by various writers and activists.<ref name=Rizzo
%252F/><ref>[[Oren Ben-Dor]], [http://www.counterpunch.org/bendor03152008.html 'The Silencing of Gilad Atzmon'], [[CounterPunch]], March 15, 2008. Ben-Dor wrote “I am firmly convinced that these vulgar attempts at silencing of Gilad and other courageous voices offends against supremely thoughtful, compassionate and egalitarian intellectual endeavours."</ref><ref>Chris Searle, [http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/index.php/news/content/view/full/86692 Review of the book '&#x(contracted; show full)
*Ivan Hewett, [http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/music/rockandjazzmusic/3667959/Gilad-Altzmon-High-flown-ecstasies-from-an-angry-man.html Gilad Altzmon: High-flown ecstasies from an angry man], [[The Daily Telegraph]], September 17, 2007.
*[http://www.middle-east-online.com/english/opinion/?id=21321 Gilad Atzmon Interviewed by Mary Rizzo], Middle East Online, July, 2007.

<!-- Metadata: see [[Wikipedia:Persondata]] -->
{{Persondata
|
nameNAME=Atzmon%252C, Gilad
|ALTERNATIVE NAMES=
|SHORT DESCRIPTION=Israeli musician and political activist
|DATE OF BIRTH=June 9, 1963
|PLACE OF BIRTH=[[Tel Aviv]], [[Israel]]
|DATE OF DEATH=
|PLACE OF DEATH=
}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Atzmon, Gilad}}
[[Category:1963 births]]
[[Category:Living people]]
[[Category:People from Tel Aviv]]
[[Category:Bebop saxophonists]]
[[Category:Hard bop saxophonists]]
[[Category:Jazz saxophonists]]
[[Category:Writers on Zionism]]
[[Category:Jewish anti-Zionism]]


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