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Project Director; Colloquium Coordinator; Professor, School of English and Theatre Studies, University of Guelph; Artistic Director, The Guelph Jazz Festival

University of Guelph

Dr. Heble is the author or editor of several books, including Landing On The Wrong Note: Jazz, Dissonance, and Critical Practice (2000), The Other Side of Nowhere: Jazz, Improvisation, and Communities in Dialogue (2004), and Rebel Musics: Human Rights, Resistant Sounds, and the Politics of Music Making (2003). Dr. Heble is also a founding editor of the new scholarly online peer-reviewed journal, Critical Studies in Improvisation/Études critiques en improvisation. As the founder and artistic director of the Guelph Jazz Festival, Dr. Heble has jolted the citizens of Guelph into an appreciation of improvised and avant-garde music and delighted aficionados from around the world with his innovative and daring programming. Under his visionary leadership, the Festival – a three-time recipient of the Lieutenant Governor’s Award of the Arts (1997, 2000, 2001) – has achieved a rock-solid international reputation as one of the world’s most inspired and provocative musical events. Dr. Heble is also a pianist, and his first CD, a live concert recording of improvised music with percussionist and ICASP co-investigator, Jesse Stewart, has been released on the IntrepidEar label.

...partly because I know that’s the only way that we could solve a creative problem [using improvisation with children ranging in abilities] and what doesn’t work is trying to impose a template on the students who are not able to respond to that template.

– Pauline Oliveros (in working with Abilities First)