Big Ideas in Improvisation: Darius Jones and Harmony Holiday in Conversation
Saturday, September 14 // 10:00–11:15am EDT
ImprovLab at University of Guelph, 108 McKinnon
Part of the Guelph Jazz Festival Colloquium 2024
This Big Ideas in Improvisation event featured Darius Jones (Music, Wesleyan University) and Harmony Holiday (writer, dancer, archivist, experimental filmmaker) in conversation, moderated by Kevin McNeilly (Department of English Languages and Literatures, University of British Columbia). This event was part of the Guelph Jazz Festival Colloquium 2024.
You can watch a full video recording of this event here:
Darius Jones has created a recognizable voice as a critically acclaimed saxophonist and composer by embracing individuality and innovation in the tradition of Black music. Jones has received awards and acclaim for not only his studio albums featuring music and images evocative of Black Futurism, but also for his commissioned work as a composer throughout the United States and Canada. Jones’ fLuXkit Vancouver (i̶t̶s̶ suite but sacred) co-released on Northern Spy and We Jazz Records was listed as #3 in The Wire‘s Top 50 Albums of 2023 and among NPR‘s 50 Best Albums of 2023. Jones was the 2022 MATA Festival artist in residence and festival curator, where he premiered Colored School No. 3 (Extra Credit), and a JJA Jazz Awards finalist nominee for Alto Saxophonist of the Year in 2022. Jones has collaborated with numerous iconic musicians including Gerald Cleaver, Oliver Lake, William Parker, Jason Moran, Trevor Dunn, Dave Burrell, Matthew Shipp, Marshall Allen, Nasheet Waits, Branford Marsalis, Travis Laplante, Fay Victor, Nicole Mitchell, Georgia Ann Muldrow, International Contemporary Ensemble and many more.
Harmony Holiday is the author of Negro League Baseball (2011), winner of the Fence Books Motherwell Prize; Go Find your Father/A Famous Blues (2013), a “dos-a-dos” book featuring poetry, letters, and essays; and Hollywood Forever (2017), which she is turning into an afroballet. She is currently working on a biography of Abbey Lincoln and an epic called M a a f A, an exploration of reparations and the body. Holiday’s work tests the limits of language and memory, pushing at the elasticity of both poems and prose.
