Gilad Atzmon (, ; born 9 June 1963) is an Israeli-born British saxophonist, novelist, political activist, and writer.
As a musician, he is best known as a saxophonist and bandleader. His instruments include the saxophone, accordion, clarinet, zurna and flute. Atzmon has been known to play over 100 dates a year. He has been bandleader, successively, of the Gilad Atzmon Quartet, the Spiel Acid Jazz Band and the Orient House Ensemble. Exploring identity through the folk forms of diverse cultures, his bands and other projects have recorded around 20 albums. Since 1998, he has also been a member of the English rock band, the Blockheads. He has played on albums by Pink Floyd and Robert Wyatt and collaborated with other musicians on their recordings. He has also produced albums for Sarah Gillespie, Norman Watt-Roy and others.
Atzmon has written satirical novels, non-fiction works and read essays on the subjects of Palestinian rights, Israel and identity politics. These writings have been described by scholars and anti-racism activists as being antisemitic and containing Holocaust denial.
Early life Atzmon was born in Tel Aviv, Israel, to a conservative secular Jewish family. He grew up in Jerusalem, where his father served in the military.
Atzmon first became interested in British jazz when he came across recordings of Ronnie Scott and Tubby Hayes. During his incapacitation for nearly a year following a climbing accident, Atzmon started playing the saxophone in earnest. Discovering bebop, he said that the albums Charlie Parker with Strings were what made him want to be a jazz musician.
Atzmon's three-year compulsory service in the Israel Defense Forces commenced in mid 1981; at first he served as a combat medic, including the early months of the 1982 Lebanon War, but most of his service was in the Israeli Air Force orchestra. Atzmon recounts that, after his demobilisation, he spent an autumn busking in Europe.
Musical career Early years In the following years, he trained at the Rubin Academy of Music in Jerusalem. During the late 1980s and 1990s Atzmon was a popular session musician and producer, recording extensively and performing with artists such as Yardena Arazi, Meir Banai, Ofra Haza, Si Himan and Yehuda Poliker. He started the first incarnation of the "Gilad Atzmon Quartet" and a group named "Spiel Acid Jazz Band", and performed regularly at the Red Sea Jazz Festival.
In 1994, Atzmon, after initially planning to study in the United States, enrolled at the University of Essex, earning a master's degree in philosophy. Atzmon recounts that, soon after arriving in the UK, he secured a residency at the Black Lion in Kilburn and, after establishing a following playing bebop and post-bop, began touring Europe with his band. In 2002, he became a British citizen, and renounced his Israeli citizenship.
Instruments and style Originally a tenor saxophone player, Atzmon's main instrument is the alto saxophone: he also plays the accordion, the soprano, tenor and baritone saxophones and the clarinet, flute, sol and zurna.
Atzmon's musical method has been to explore cultural identity, including tango and klezmer, as well as Arabic, Balkan, Gypsy and Ladino folk forms. Atzmon says Arabic music, like Indian music, cannot be notated like western music but must be internalised by "reverting to the primacy of the ear". His performances have been described as "quotes from jazz standards, torch songs, ideas playfully purloined from Mediterranean or Middle Eastern sources, sultry Paris-cabaret smooches, New Orleans clarinet swing and bebop in hyperdrive", and that "His source materials range from east-European folk music through to hard bop, funk and French accordion tunes". Atzmon's varies his recording style from that of his performances, saying "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."
Collaborations and groups
In the early 2000s, Atzmon had at times played over 100 dates a year and recorded and performed with such artists as Ian Dury, Sir Paul McCartney, Sinéad O'Connor and Robbie Williams. He led a bebop quartet for over 20 years and, in 2000, founded the Orient House Ensemble, with Asaf Sirkis on drums, Frank Harrison on piano and Oli Hayhurst on bass. In 2003, Hayhurst was replaced by Yaron Stavi and, in 2009, Sirkis left to form his own trio. The Ensemble recorded nine albums and, in 2010, announced a 40-date anniversary tour. In 2017, the Ensemble collaborated with the Sigamos String Quartet to produce The Spirit of Trane, a tribute to John Coltrane. The Ensemble was named after Orient House, the former East Jerusalem headquarters of the Palestine Liberation Organization.
In 1998, Atzmon joined veteran punk rock band Ian Dury and the Blockheads, while sustaining other projects.Stephen Robb, "The old Blockheads shows go on", BBC News, 25 January 2007.Sara Greek, Blockheads come to Hertford Corn Exchange , Hertfordshire Mercury, 28 October 2011. He participated in Robert Wyatt's album, Comicopera (2007),Chris Jones, A national treasure makes another peerless album, BBC, 5 October 2007. and with Wyatt, Ros Stephens and lyricist Alfreda Benge, on For the Ghosts Within (2010).Andy Gill, Album: Wyatt, Atzmon, Stephen, For The Ghosts Within (Domino), The Independent, 8 October 2011.Alex Hudson, "Robert Wyatt Unveils New Collaborative Album", Exclaim!, 8 July 2010 Atzmon produced and arranged two albums for Sarah Gillespie, Stalking Juliet (2009) and In The Current Climate (2011), and toured with her band, and has produced albums for Dutch-Iraqi jazz singer Elizabeth Simonian, afro-jazz percussionist and singer Adriano Adewale, and Blockheads bassist Norman Watt-Roy. In 2010, Atzmon released a musical transcription of ten saxophone solos.
In 2014, he performed on The Endless River, the final studio album of Pink Floyd and, in 2017, collaborated with Indonesian world and jazz pianist Dwiki Dharmawan and Middle Eastern oud star Kamal Musallam on World Peace Trio. Atzmon has been a member of the creative panel of the Global Music Foundation, which runs international musical education and performance events internationally.
Reviews and awards Musical mastery In 2003, Exile was BBC Jazz Album of the Year;Jazz winners span generations, BBC, 30 July 2003. John Fordham. reviewing it in The Guardian, concluded that Atzmon "would have a formidable international reputation as a soloist alone". The Guardian, reviewing MusiK (2004), called Atzmon "a dominant figure in European and Middle Eastern-influenced world-music" while Stuart Nicholson in The Observer said of it that "this remarkable man and his brilliantly conceived ensemble are now well and truly a world-class act". The BBC, reviewing In Loving Memory of America (2009), called Atzmon "One of the finest alto players around", while The Guardian, in reviewing The Whistle Blower (2015), called Atzmon "a gifted jazz musician to his core". John Lewis in The Guardian praised Atzmon as "one of London's finest saxophonists" although noting that "even his best albums have a slightly tame, homogenous feel that shares little with his blistering live performances". Lewis also said, "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".
Activism-influenced music The Birmingham Post wrote that, "overriding the considerable instrumental technique of all involved, it is the intense beliefs and emotions they summon up and communicate that make this band's music so special" referring to Atzmon's incorporation of political and activist quotes in the Ensemble's performances. The Manchester Evening News said of Refuge (2007), "The individuality of the music is extraordinary. No one is more willing to serve his music with raw political passion",Alan Brownlee, Gilad Atzmon & The Orient House Ensemble – Refuge (Enja), Manchester Evening News, 30 August 2007. while the BBC said "...the OHE is finding its voice in an increasingly subtle blend of East and West, that's brutal and beautiful".Kathryn Shackleton, Gilad Atzmon & The Orient House Ensemble, Refuge, BBC, 1 October 2007.
Lewis described Atzmon's comedy klezmer project, Artie Fishel and the Promised Band (2006), as "a clumsy satire on what (Atzmon) regards as the artificial nature of Jewish identity politics" and felt that "trenchant politics often sit uneasily alongside music, particularly when that music is instrumental". The Telegraph said, "on the level of technical skill with alto and soprano saxes and clarinet, Atzmon is a real master" while describing Atzmon as "an angry man".
Writings Views Atzmon has defined himself variously as "not a Jew anymore. I indeed despise the Jew in me (whatever is left)", a "proud self-hating Jew" (saying, "I celebrate my hatred towards everything I represent") in the style of Otto Weininger,Theo Panayides, 'Wandering jazz player,', Cyprus Mail, 21 February 2010: "My ethical duty is to say the things that I know and feel. I'm an artist. Do you know.. this is something I learned from Otto Weininger, the Austrian philosopher. He was a clever boy, killed himself when he was 21. ..He was definitely a proud self-hating Jew! I'm not a self-hating Jew: I'm a proud self-hating Jew! It's a big difference… I celebrate my hatred towards everything I represent – or better to say [everything] I'm associated with". "a Jew who hates Judaism", and as "a Hebrew-speaking Palestinian".
He has said: "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".Theo Panayides, 'Wandering jazz player,', Cyprus Mail, 21 February 2010. Atzmon has compared "the Jewish Ideology" to that of the Nazis and has described Israel's policy toward the Palestinians as genocide. He has condemned "Jewishness" as "very much a supremacist, racist tendency", but has also stated that "I don't have anything against Jews in particular and you won't find that in my writings". Regarding the one-state solution, Atzmon concedes that such a state probably would be controlled by Islam, but says, "That's their business".
Periodicals Atzmon has written for a number of publications, including CounterPunch, Dissident Voice and The Palestine Chronicle. In 2009, he wrote for and edited the website, Palestine Think Tank. According to John Lewis in The Guardian, "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".
Books Atzmon's first book, A Guide to the Perplexed, published in 2001, is a comic novel set in a future in which Israel has been replaced by a Palestinian state. Matthew J. Reisz for The Independent wrote that "As a viciously black satire on Israeli life" the book "is grandiose, childish and nasty, but with just enough connection with reality to give it a certain unsettling power" while Darren King in The Observer commented that "it works because Atzmon writes with so much style and his gags are so hilarious".
Atzmon's second novel, My One and Only Love, published in 2005, was described by the BBC as a "comedic narrative on Zionist espionage and intrigue" and a "psychological and political commentary on the personal conflict between being true to one's heart and being loyal to the Jews"."Gilad Atzmon's Orient House Ensemble – The Junction", BBC Cambridgeshire, 3 June 2005. By 2010, the two novels had been published in 27 languages.
His A to Zion: The Definitive Israeli Lexicon, published in 2015, is a satirical dictionary illustrated by cartoons from Enzo Apicella.