Multidisciplinary artist Nobuo Kubota was a ‘virtuoso of the spontaneous’

At Toronto’s Music Gallery in 1977, Japanese-Canadian multidisciplinary artist Nobuo Kubota installed a sound sculpture composed of five steel blades and a corresponding number of speakers and organ pedals. From this came a stream of growls and rumbles which had been passed through a synthesizer.

When Globe and Mail critic Adele Freedman expressed to the artist that the noise left her “overwhelmed, even oppressed,” Mr. Kubota instantly understood the reaction and offered help.