IICSI in Amsterdam “Jazz Beyond Borders” Rhythm Changes Conference

The nucleus of the Artists’ Jazz Band in the early 1960s consisted of four of the city’s most prominent young abstract expressionists. Left to right: Nobuo Kubota, Graham Coughtry, Robert Markle, Gordon Rayner.

ICASP/IICSI associates Alan Stanbridge (University of Toronto, Scarborough) and David Lee (PhD candidate, School of English and Theatre Studies, University of Guelph) each recently returned from Europe, where they presented papers at the third annual Rhythm Changes conference, “Jazz Beyond Borders” at the Conservatory of Amsterdam September 4-7. Dr. Stanbridge’s paper, All the Rest is Propaganda: Jazz, Class and Race in British New Wave Cinema examined the placement of jazz music in British New Wave films circa 1960 while David Lee’s We Can Draw!: Canadian Improvised Music, The Artists’ Jazz Band and the Discourse of Absence discussed connections between free improvisation and abstract expressionism.