Improv Notes: May 2012
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 IMprov Notes: News of the Moment May 2012
Research Matters Because Jazz
Improvisation Can Build Stronger Communities
The ICASP project is featured on the Research Matters website, a major new campaign just launched by the Council of Ontario Universities. Each Ontario University was asked to nominate major research projects or activities to be profiled. ICASP was chosen as the project to highlight from The University of Guelph.
Once again, the ICASP project is commended and highlighted for its ability to use improvised music to help transform people and build communities.
LAST CALL:
2012 Guelph Jazz Festival Colloquium University of Guelph, Guelph, Ontario, Canada September 5-7, 2012 PEDAGOGY & PRAXIS: IMPROVISATION as SOCIAL JUSTICE and SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY The Guelph Jazz Festival, in conjunction with the Macdonald Stewart Art Centre, the University of Guelph, and the SSHRC MCRI research project on “Improvisation, Community, and Social Practice,” invites proposals for papers to be presented at our annual three‐day international interdisciplinary conference. This year's colloquium will take place September 5th to 7th as part of the 19th annual Guelph Jazz Festival (running from September 5th-9th). It will bring together a diverse range of scholars, creative practitioners, arts presenters, policy makers, and members of the general public. Featuring workshops, panel discussions, keynote lectures, performances, and dialogues among researchers, artists, and audiences, the annual colloquium cuts across a range of social and institutional locations and promotes a dynamic international exchange of cultural forms and knowledges. The 2012 edition of the colloquium will focus on the relationships between social responsibility, social justice, and improvisation as reflected through various musical genres. Beginning with the notion of the paradigmatic possibilities of jazz improvisation, the colloquium will explore how improvisation, as pedagogy and as paradigm, creates spaces of praxis that operate as socially responsible and social justice-oriented practices for human life. How might we envision a social praxis indebted to the poetics of improvisation that operates as an emancipatory form of human knowledge and life? Acknowledging that a deep social engagement with the paradigmatic possibilities of improvisation might dramatically alter our present knowledge system, do theoretical analyses of improvisation’s pedagogic possibilities present us with socially responsible tasks as scholars, performers, and citizens? Points of focus may include: teacher education and improvisation; hip hop culture and improvisation; the improvising musician as troubadour or diplomat; soundsystems and improvisatory poetics; improvisation as education / education as improvisation; jazz education and community development; autodidactic methods of learning jazz and improvisation; the pros and cons of institutionalized forms of jazz education; educating for social change through jazz; critical pedagogy and jazz education; pedagogies of the oppressed/pedagogies of the privileged; learning by doing: the bandstand as classroom. We are particularly interested in interdisciplinary work that speaks to both an academic audience and a general public. We also invite presenters to submit completed versions of their papers to our peer‐reviewed journal, Critical Studies in Improvisation/Études critiques en improvisation (www.criticalimprov.com) for consideration. Please send (500 word) proposals (for 15 minute delivery) and a short bio by May 31, 2012 to: The 2012 Guelph Jazz Festival Colloquium c/o Dr. Ajay Heble, Artistic Director, The Guelph Jazz Festival email: jazzcoll@uoguelph.ca Quote of the Month:
“you have to understand improvisation, how a standard reference can become something else. The text is context for what erupts like a solo— the phrase of iambic pentameter in a strophe of vers libre.”  George Elliott Clarke, is a Canadian poet and playwright. His work largely explores and chronicles the experience and history of the Black Canadian community of Nova Scotia, creating a cultural geography that Clarke refers to as "Africadia". In 2003 Clarke wrote the jazz libretto Québécité at the request of the Guelph Jazz Festival, with music composed by Juno award-winning pianist D.D. Jackson. His most recent book of poetry is Red.On April 27th, accompanied by bassist David Lee, Clarke delivered a reading and interview entitled, “Your bass sounds like a typewriter” at the TransCanada Institute at the University of Guelph. The event was presented in partnership with Improvisation, Community, and Social Practice. Landing on the Wrong Note translated into Spanish
Guelph Jazz Festival and ICASP Now Hiring: Outreach and Development Assistant Guelph Jazz Festival (GJF) & Improvisation, Community, and Social Practice (ICASP) are currently hiring for an Outreach & Development Assistant (ODA)
Status: Full-time, year-round employee (1-year, renewable) Job Summary: The Outreach & Development Assistant will be responsible for coordinating community outreach programs, including the Improviser-in-Residence program. The ODA will also assist the Guelph Jazz Festival with fund development, fundraising, special events, marketing and public relations.
Applications must be received by Tuesday, May 22nd, 2012 
About ICASP
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