Nobuo Kubota (b. Vancouver, British Columbia) left his career as an architect in 1969, shifting fields to eventually become one of Canada’s preeminent intermedia artists. For the past seven decades, he has produced an array of disciplinary hybrid projects, including sound sculptures, performances, videos, installations, three-dimensional poems, and improvisational music. In 1962, he and the artists of the Isaacs Gallery—Gordon Rayner, Robert Markle, and Graham Coughtry—formed the Artists’ Jazz Band. In 1974, he joined the renowned free music improvisational group, the Canadian Creative Music Collective (CCMC). In 1975, the CCMC opened the Music Gallery in Toronto. By the 1990s, Kubota’s musical and visual sensibilities converged, blurring disciplinary borders with a fully integrated intermedial creative practice to produce a unique form of public music/sound performance. Recent performances and exhibitions have been held at The Next Contemporary (Toronto), Japanese Canadian Cultural Centre (Toronto), and YYZ Artists’ Outlet (Toronto), among others.

To celebrate the opening of GTA24, Kubota will present a new performance that brings together vocal work and sound poetry. Inspired by free improvisation and the sensibilities of jazz, as well as Kabuki theater, Kubota’s performances blur disciplinary as well as cultural borders.