From: IICSI Newsletter icaspweb@uoguelph.

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Subject: ImprovNotes - June 2018
Date: June 20, 2018 at 12:03 PM
To: jedwa4@uwo.ca

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Announcing the Guelph

Jazz Festival Colloquium

Hovering at the Edge: Words,

Music, Sound, and Song
ImprovNotes is a monthly newsletter
distributed by the International Institute
for Critical Studies in Improvisation.

Colloquium - Sounding
Promise in the Present
Tense: Improvising
through Turbulent Times

Brent Hayes Edwards

Hovering at the Edge: Words, Music,

Sound, and Song is the theme of this
year’s Guelph Jazz Festival Colloquium.
Hosted by IICSI in partnership with the
Guelph Jazz Festival, the University of
Guelph, and the Art Gallery of Guelph, the
Colloquium will run September 12-15. The
Ta'Kaiya Blaney
Colloquium will feature curated panels,
speakers, and performances, with
Once again this June the Vancouver
participants riffing on the interplay among
International Jazz Festival and the Coastal
words, music, sound, and song.
Jazz and Blues Society are partnering with
IICSI to present their ninth annual
colloquium, Sounding Promise in the
Present Tense: Improvising Through
Turbulent Times. The Colloquium will take
place at UBC’s downtown Robson Campus
from June 22-24. The three-day academic
symposium will feature panel discussions,
presentations, and keynote addresses led
by world-renowned improvisers who will be
in town for the TD Vancouver International
Jazz Festival. Day One of the
colloquium, dedicated to the late Métis
writer / teacher / researcher Jo-Ann
Episkenew (1952-2016), focuses on First
Nations artists and researchers, and
includes a keynote address by Ta'Kaiya
Blaney and a presentation by Blue Moon
Marquee. Day Two features an artist talk
by Joe Sorbara with Peggy Lee and Bill
Clark, a keynote address by Scott
Amendola, and an afternoon of “Critical
Karaoke.” Day Three features an artist
keynote with Nels Cline, and artist talks
by Dylan van der Schyff, Gwyneth
Herbert, and Aram Bakajian & Alan
Semerdjian. Many colloquium presenters
will be performing in a variety of contexts
throughout the festival. The full schedule is
available online.
Musical Improvisation at
Land's End
August 4-11, 2018
Musical Improvisation at Land's End
(MILE) / Coin-du-Banc en folie is a
unique summer camp held in Coin-du-
Banc, Quebec. Presented by IICSI, MILE
seeks to engage musicians and non-
musicians alike in hands-on workshops led
In his book Epistrophies: Jazz and the
Literary Imagination, keynote speaker
Brent Hayes Edwards attests to the
vibrant and compelling history of interplay
in African American art-making and
performance between sound and writing.
Drawing specifically on transmedial
encounters in jazz that “[hover] at the
edge” of language, and literary texts that
aspire to the condition of music, Edwards
explores the ways in which “the practice of
one medium can be inspired, provoked, or
extended by an attention to the
specificities of another.”
Edwards will present his digital restoration
of the legendary 16mm short film Sweet
Willie Rollbar’s Orientation, originally made
and scored by saxophonist Julius Hemphill
in 1972. The film also features poet K.
Curtis Lyle, actor Malinke Elliott, and other
members of the Black Artists’ Group of St.
Louis. Following the screening, Edwards
will contextualize the film among the Black
Artists’ Group and in relation to other black
experiments in multimedia aesthetics in
the early 1970s.
Emerging Scholars Program
Inspired by an initiative developed by our
friends and colleagues at the
ArtsEverywhere Festival, and in partnership
with the University of Guelph, the
Colloquium invites students and
community members to join our inaugural
Emerging Scholars Program.This program
offers up to ten individuals (from all levels
of study) an opportunity to participate in
the program and engage with participants.
Selected scholars will receive tickets
to Guelph Jazz Festival performances, an
intimate 2-hour "emerging scholars
breakfast" with panelists, presenters, and
other distinguished guests including
Lawrence Hill, and an opportunity to
publish insights gained at the Festival and
Colloquium on the IICSI website.
musicians alike in hands-on workshops led
by world-class improvising artists. The
workshops will take place in an inclusive
and supportive environment, nurturing and
developing musical improvisation as a vital
model of arts-based community-making. In
addition to participating in workshops,
lecture-demonstrations, and jam sessions,
campers (aged 16+) will attend concerts
and have opportunities to experience some
of the unique tourist attractions that the
area has to offer. This year's artist
facilitators are Marianne Trudel & René
Lussier. There are still a few spaces
available for the 2018 edition of the camp.
For more information or to apply, please
visit the MILE webpage.
Indigenous Improvisation
Colloquium: Freedom &
Responsibility
Trevor Reed.
Indigenous performers, composers and
song-makers have a long history of
engagement with certain improvisatory
traditions, including jazz, contemporary
classical music, and song. At the same
time, contemporary Indigenous music
production is often rooted in traditions
specific to Indigenous peoples. These
“roots” might refer not only to traditional
Emerging scholars will be expected to
attend colloquium events and write a short
reflection piece on their experience. Please
complete the online form if you're
interested in joining this program.
George E. Lewis at
Harvard
Harvard Commencement, May 24, 2018. Seated
(from left) Alan M. Garber, Drew Faust, John Lewis;
standing (from left) George E. Lewis, Twyla Tharp,
Harvey Vernon Fineberg, Rita Dove, Ricardo Lagos,
Sallie Watson (Penny) Chisholm, Wong Kar Wai.
Photo by Stephanie Mitchell, Harvard Staff
Photographer.
IICSI researcher George E. Lewis was
among a select group who received
honorary degrees at Harvard University’s
commencement exercises in May. Part of
what is known as the “second wave” of
musicians who emerged from Chicago’s
AACM in the 1970s, Dr. Lewis first became
known as a virtuoso improvising
trombonist, but soon expanded his output
into electronic and computer music,
computer-based multimedia installations,
and a range of notated and improvisational
musical forms. He is the composer of the
opera Afterword, and the author of the
American Book Award-winning A Power
Stronger than Itself: The AACM and
American Experimental Music (2008), and
co-editor of the two-volume Oxford
Handbook of Critical Improvisation Studies
(2016). Lewis’ fellow honorees included
choreographer Twyla Tharp, filmmaker
Wong Kar Wai, former president of Chile
Ricardo Lagos Escobar, poet Rita Dove, and
“roots” might refer not only to traditional Ricardo Lagos Escobar, poet Rita Dove, and
sonic elements, but also to such matters as civil rights activist John Lewis.
lineage, ownership, stylistic borrowing, and
social responsibility, in ways that resist Short Takes
Euroamerican-centric assumptions. The
Indigenous Improvisation Colloquium, July
Music Matters XXII in Groningen: IICSI
4-5 in St. John’s, Newfoundland, will focus
researcher Chris Tonelli moderated the
on the complex relationship of individual
panel “Technology’s Disruption of the Music
freedom and social responsibility in the
Industry” at Music Matters XXII, a concert
context of artistic practice. Participants will
and lecture series presented on June 15 by
address such questions as: To what extent
the University of Groningen’s Department
and in what ways do they draw upon
of Arts, Culture and Media and the
traditional elements when they improvise?
Groningen Research Institute for the Study
How do Indigenous protocols play a role in
of Culture. Through talks, panels, and
their practice? How do inter-Indigenous
practical demonstrations, the symposium
exchanges work best? What are the
explored the ways in which recent
challenges and synergies of intercultural
technological advancements have disrupted
(Indigenous/non-Indigenous)
contemporary compositional processes and
performance?
the wider music industry. Dr. Tonelli is a
professor at the University of Groningen,
This event takes place in the MMaP Gallery,
an improvising vocalist, and
St. John’s. There will be keynote addresses
the founder/conductor of the Groningen
by Trevor Reed, Raven Chacon, and
Vocal Exploration choir.
Candice Hopkins, and participants /
presenters include Dawn Avery, Jessica
Bissett Perea, Snorre Bjerck, Cris Derksen,
Frode Fjellheim, Dolleen Manning, John
Carlos Perea, Dylan Robinson, Josh Tucker,
and Yuan-Yu Kuan. A number of these
presenters/performers will also stay in
town to be part of the Sound Symposium
XIX – St. John’s’ famous biennial festival of
experimental music and sound, July 5-15.
Call for Papers – Journal
Anthony Braxton Submissions: The Soundtrack has issued
a call for papers for guest-edited volumes,
Everywhere
contributions to themed issues, and article
submissions for upcoming issues. Edited by
Michael Filimowicz of Simon Fraser
University, The Soundtrack is a cross-
disciplinary journal which brings together
research in the area of sound and music
studies in relation to film and other moving
image media.

Anthony Braxton’s ZIM septet at Café Oto: Braxton

(reeds), with Jacqueline Kerrod and Miriam
Overlach (harp), Jean Cook (violin), Dan Perkson
(tuba), Adam Matlock (accordion), and Taylor Ho
Bynum (brass). Photo by Richard Williams / the
 blue moment.
Since his retirement from Wesleyan U in
2013, composer / saxophonist / pianist
Anthony Braxton has remained
steadfastly prolific. In the past five years,
the music world has seen both an increase
in Braxton’s own performances, and a
wider acceptance of his work and its
implications. Following the premiere of
Braxton’s ZIM septet at Café Oto in
London, Dover announced the publication
of a new, expanded, 30th-anniversary
edition of Forces in Motion, Graham
Lock’s seminal book on the influential
composer / saxophonist. Meanwhile, on
June 10 at the Jazz Gallery in New York
City, the Kaufman Music Center presented
a concert of Braxton compositions played
by high school students. The students were
joined in the concert by four artists who
have worked with Braxton: vocalists Kyoko
Kitamura and Anne Rhodes, brass player
Taylor Ho Bynum, and bassist Carl Testa.
As Seth Colter Walls noted in the New York
Times, Braxton stated as early as 1982
that he wanted “to become involved in the
world of children and family-centered
music … all of these matters are related to
world change.” Aakash Mittal, the
conductor of the June 10 recital, added,
“Braxton’s whole thing is, he lets other
people be creators. That’s what teenagers
need. That’s also what the world needs.”
Artists of the Month:
Bulgarian Women's Choirs
"... Like Six Women Forming a
Laser"
Call for Papers – Dublin Jazz
Conference: June 30, 2018 is the deadline
for submissions to "the first jazz
conference in Ireland." “Documenting Jazz”
will take place at the Dublin Institute of
Technology from January 17-19, 2019. In
marking the centenary of the first
documented jazz performance in Ireland
(February 14, 1919), the conference seeks
to ask how and why jazz has been
documented, both historically and
contemporaneously, inviting participants
"to consider who and what has been
documented, by whom, and for what
purposes.” Keynote speakers will include
Krin Gabbard and Gabriel Solis. The
event is delivered in partnership with the
Research Foundation for Music in Ireland,
the Society for Musicology in Ireland, and
the Birmingham Centre for Media and
Cultural Research. The full Call For Papers
is available online.
Prince Amponsah in After the Blackout. Photo by
Elias Campbell.
After the Blackout: Toronto playwright
(and U. of Guelph theatre professor)
Judith Thompson founded the RARE
Theatre Company to put artists with
disabilities and other marginalized
communities in the spotlight. In May, RARE
presented Thompson’s After the Blackout

2018 has seen a key musical influence via
an Eastern European folk form: Bulgarian
women’s choirs. In developing the huge,
orchestral score for the latest Star Wars
film Solo, British composer John Powell
travelled to Sofia to record with a 36-voice
women’s choir, in order to contribute “an
aggressive, exotic sound” for the entrance
of the film’s Marauders and “to feel like a
different culture had arrived on the scene.”
presented Thompson’s After the Blackout
at the Soulpepper Theatre in Toronto.
Performed and informed by a cast of artists
who are blind, deaf, brain injured and
amputees, After the Blackout presents an
interwoven group who, under the stars,
meet to find connection through adversity.
Quotes of the Month

Talking about her recent music, American

singer Neko Case spoke about being
influenced by smaller, six-person Bulgarian
choirs: “I didn’t know where my voice
belonged … I can’t do what the women I
know can do, or even the men I know … I
always wondered why I couldn’t sing like
that. Then I started listening to Bulgarian
harmony singing, which is all about the Stephen Jay Gould
drone. It’s like six women forming a laser.”
I am, somehow, less interested in the
weight and convolutions of Einstein’s brain
than in the near certainty that people of
equal talent have lived and died in cotton
fields and sweatshops.

—Scientist and author Stephen Jay Gould

(1941-2002)

About IICSI
The International Institute for Critical Studies in Improvisation (IICSI) is a partnered
research institute building from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council
of Canada (SSHRC) project, “Improvisation, Community, and Social Practice”
(ICASP). The Institute’s research team is comprised of 50+ scholars from 20+
institutions. IICSI's partners include six academic institutions (U Guelph; McGill U.;
Memorial U of Newfoundland; U British Columbia; U of Regina; and U of California,
Santa Barbara), a foundation partner (Musagetes), and 30+ community-based
organizations. The Institute's mandate is to create positive social change through the
confluence of improvisational arts, innovative scholarship, and collaborative action.

About ImprovNotes
ImprovNotes is edited and written by David Lee and assembled by administrative
assistant Rachel Collins. If you have anything improvisation related that you would like
included in the newsletter, please email iicsi@uoguelph.ca.
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