Time Changes: Improvisation, History and the Body

June 20-21, 2015, Vancouver, British Columbia

The International Institute for Critical Studies in Improvisation and Coastal Jazz will host a colloquium on June 20 and 21, 2015, during the opening weekend of the TD Canada Trust Vancouver International Jazz Festival, at UBC Robson Square (room C100). Presentations from artists, performers, scholars and community members – including keynotes by musicians performing at the festival – will focus on social, cultural and artistic encounters with and depictions of time and of the times in which we live. What does it mean to create in the moment? What are the implications of keeping time or of transgressing time? How do the improvised arts, such as jazz, present both individual and collective history? How do musical, poetic or kinetic beats relate to broader social and historical rhythms? How does the does the human body sound its time and place? Can improvisation bring about tangible social or cultural change? Do improvisational arts – theatre, music, spoken word, dance – enact any particular kinds of futurity, any politics of hope? What does it mean to embody particular traditions or genealogies when one improvises?

Schedule

Click here to download a copy of the schedule.

Saturday, June 20th

10:00 am: Artist Talk - PrOphecy Sun: The Body, Chance, and Improvisation

10:45 am-12:30 pm: Panel - Race, Rhythm, and History

• Emma Cleary, Staffordshire University - Jazz-Shaped Bodies: Mapping Space, Time, and Sound in African American Fiction
• Barry Long, Bucknell University - Freedom Songs at the Intersection of Jazz and Journalism
• Brian Jude de Lima, York University - Synth-copated Rhythms: Reanimating Dissomance as a Tool for Rhythmic Prolongation
• Brent Rowan, Wilfrid Laurier University - The Impact of a Jazz Improvisation Experience on an Amateur Adult Musician's Mind, Body, and Spirit

12:30-1:00 pm: Catered Lunch

1:00-2:00 pm: Keynote - Billy Martin: Wandering

2:00-3:30 pm: Film Screening and Discussion - Ornette: Made in America, moderated by David Lee, University of Guelph

3:30 pm: Artist Presentation - Rupert Common and the Freestyle Rap Alliance: Improvisation in Hip Hop

Sunday, June 21st

10:00 am: Artist Talk - Julia Úlehla: The Dálava Project: Meditations on (Musical) Evolution and (Cyclic) Time: Activating Past, Present, and Future through Song, Body Memory, and Improvisation

10:45 am: Panel - Interfaces–Contact Technologies

• Kiran Bhumber and Bob Pritchard, University of British Columbia
• Neelamjit Dhillon, California Institute of the Arts

11:45 am: Chapbook and CD Launch - Ammons: A Sheaf of Words for Piano, Kevin McNeilly and Geoff Mitchell

12:30-1:00 pm: Catered Lunch

1:00-2:00 pm: Keynote - Gerry Hemmingway: Expression in Music: A Look Inside the Personal Language of an Improviser

2:00-3:30 pm: Panel - Impacts and Changes

• Kathe Gray, York University - All Time Exists in the Present: Utopian Moments in Improvised Music Making
• David Lee, University of Guelph - Improvised Music in Canada: High Modernism and the Artists Jazz Band
• Tom Scholte, University of British Columbia - Asynchronicity and the Emergence of Meaning in Theatrical Performance: Cybernetically Improvised Performance Texts and their Hermeneutic Impacts

3:30 pm: Artist Prentation - Ben Brown and Michelle Lui: MAM Music and Movement Improvisation

Innovation Series Concerts (ft. conference presenters)
The Ironworks Studios, 235 Alexander St.

• The Pugs and Crows (Ben Brown), Friday June 19th, 9:30 pm
• Destroy Vancouver (Billy Marting), Friday June 19th, 11:30 pm
• Blaser/Delbecq/Gerry Hemmingway, Saturday June 20th, 9:30 pm
• Dálava (Julia Úlehla), Saturday June 20th 11:30 pm

Call for Papers: The International Institute for Critical Studies in Improvisation and Coastal Jazz will host a colloquium on June 20 and 21, 2015, during the opening weekend of the TD Canada Trust Vancouver International Jazz Festival, at UBC Robson Square (room C100). Presentations from artists, performers, scholars and community members – including keynotes by musicians performing at the festival – will focus on social, cultural and artistic encounters with and depictions of time and of the times in which we live. What does it mean to create in the moment? What are the implications of keeping time or of transgressing time? How do the improvised arts, such as jazz, present both individual and collective history? How do musical, poetic or kinetic beats relate to broader social and historical rhythms? How does the does the human body sound its time and place? Can improvisation bring about tangible social or cultural change? Do improvisational arts – theatre, music, spoken word, dance – enact any particular kinds of futurity, any politics of hope? What does it mean to embody particular traditions or genealogies when one improvises?

Please send 250-word proposals for 20-minute presentations – whether scholarly, creative or other forms of practice-based research – to Dr. Kevin McNeilly, University of British Columbia, mcneilly@mail.ubc.ca by May 1, 2015.

Please click here to download the original call for papers.