 IMprov Notes:
News of the Moment July 2014
A Few Shots from the Guelph Jazz Festival 2014 Launch
Ajay announces the 2014 lineup. This year marks the birth, or (more appropriately) the arrival, centenary of the pioneering jazz artist Sun Ra on planet Earth. The art this year features Sun Ra, and the Sun Ra Arkestra will perform, under the direction of Marshall Allen, in a collaborative performance, Hymn to the Universe, with the renowned Canadian dance company Coleman Lemieux & Compagnie.
The launch featured a performance of renowned vocal improvisers. From left to right: Gabriel Darmoo, Phil Minton, Maggie Nicols, and Chris Toneli.
Message from the Artistic Director, Ajay Heble: http://www.guelphjazzfestival.com/
Preview the Music:
Photos by Paul Watkins
2014 Hip Hop Mini-Symposium and Festival
October 17, 2014
Oregon State University – Corvallis, Oregon
The College of Liberal Arts at Oregon State University in conjunction with the Grammy Museum in Los Angeles and the Popular Music Studies Program at OSU will host a one-day conference and festival on the topic of Hip Hop Music and Culture. The conference will bring together two aspects of hip hop music: scholarship and performance. Our keynote speaker is the legendary hip hop performer MC Lyte.
Abstracts are being accepted for paper sessions and should be no longer than 500 words for a 20-minute presentation. We are interested in the interdisciplinary aspects of hip hop culture and music. Possible topics include: the future of hip hop music and practice; gender and race in hip hop; global hip hop; representation and the media; hip hop technology and the cultural production of rap music; and hip hop politics and activism.
Proposals should be sent with the subject heading: “Hip Hop Symposium Abstract” to Dr. Dana Reason at:
reasonmd@onid.oregonstate.edu.
All proposals must be received by Friday, August 15. Acceptance notices will be posted Monday August 25th. Accepted applicants must provide their own travel and lodging.
Quote(s) of the Month: Featured quotations on Improvisation from The Fierce Urgency of Now
“improvisation as a means to speak free of constraint; improvisation as a means to assemble alternative forms of community; and improvisation as a critique of dominant structures of thought.”
“Improvisation, as a key aspect of creative agency across multiple disciplines, is an important aspect of an ecology of knowledges.”
“The Western art tradition teaches us to expect and savour narrative and aesthetic closure. In contrast, the improvisatory art of aggrieved communities prepares us to resist closures, to enjoy interruption, syncopation, and indeterminacy.”
“Hope, like improvisation, is an irreducible aspect of human interiority that is also outward-facing, capable of producing radical shifts in agency, generating new forms of cocreative affiliation that can have profound ethical implications.”
― Daniel Fischlin, Ajay Heble, and George Lipsitz.
 The Fierce Urgency of Now is a pioneering work in the field of improvisation studies and ethics, a work that uses the dynamism of jazz to discuss various human rights struggles and discourses. Central to the book is the notion of cocreation, as the authors—appropriately all ICASP researchers and co-investigators of the project—insist that improvisation and rights are crucially connected. Get your copy here, today!
Authors: Daniel Fischlin is Professor and University Research Chair in the School of English and Theatre Studies at the University of Guelph in Ontario. Ajay Heble is Professor in the School of English and Theatre Studies at the University of Guelph and the founder and artistic director of the Guelph Jazz Festival. George Lipsitz is Professor in the Department of Black Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
About ICASP
The international Improvisation, Community, and Social Practice research project explores musical improvisation as a model for social change. The project plays a leading role in defining a new field of interdisciplinary research to shape political, cultural, and ethical dialogue and action.
As a form of musical practice, improvisation embodies real-time creative decision-making, risk-taking, and collaboration. Improvisation must be considered not simply as a musical form, but as a complex social phenomenon that mediates transcultural inter-artistic exchanges that produce new conceptions of identity, community, history, and the body. This project focuses primarily on jazz and creative improvised music. The dominant theoretical issues emerging from this music have vital social implications.
Check out our diverse research collection.
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On July 11th, at the age of 76, Charlie Haden passed away. Described by Time magazine as “one of the most restless, gifted and intrepid players in all of jazz,” Haden left his mark on hundreds of records as both a member and a leader. He was the anchor of the Ornette Coleman Quartet and helped define The Shape of Jazz to Come. In recent years he struggled with the degenerative effects of post-polio syndrome, and up until 2010 he was still in the studio and performing live. A month before his passing ECM released
