Please join us from Wednesday, September 11 to Saturday, September 14 for the “2024 Guelph Jazz Festival Colloquium, "Sheets of Sound: Jazz, Improvisation, and Liner Notes" in Guelph, Ontario, Canada.
This colloquium will take place in person at the Arts Research Centre (ARC), MacKinnon Building, University of Guelph Campus. The event is free and open to everybody.
Please join us on Saturday, September 14 at 3:00 PM (ET) for the culminating performance of the “KidsAbility Play Who You Are Ensemble" at the Guelph Jazz Festival. This performance will take place in person at TD Market Square, Downtown Guelph. The event is free and open to everybody!
Please join us on Friday, September 27 at 11:00 AM (ET) for Thinking Spaces: “Building a Safe Creativity Environment” with Jimmy Weinstein and Lilly Santon, a featured event in the Ontario Culture Days calendar!
This presentation will take place in person at ImprovLab, MCKN 108 at the University of Guelph, as well as online via Zoom. As always, our Thinking Spaces events are free!
Please join us on Tuesday, October 22 at 12:15 PM(ET) for “Singing in the Circle,” with the GCVI Chamber Choir, Carey West, and Joe Sorbara. This concert will take place at the "How To Draw A Tree" Wellness Circle, at the SW corner of Johnson Green, University of Guelph Campus (across from the Reynolds Building near Gordon Street). The event is free and open to all students and community.
Don't miss the GCVI Chamber Choir (directed by: Lane Osborne) improvising with vocalist Carey West and percussionist Joe Sorbara in a special collaboration with the IICSI!
Taylor Price will dive into the dynamics of culture creation in songwriting teams, exploring how cognition, interaction, and relationships shape the creative process. Drawing from his ethnographic observations in music studios and interviews with music producers, he will discuss the social interactions that drive both the linear and nonlinear paths of creativity.
After an inspiring series of six “Open Sessions” workshops, IICSI’s 2024 Improvisers-in-Residence are thrilled to invite you to a two-part evening of creativity and surprise:
“SAVE THE DATE! A Creative Community Concert with Jimmy Weinstein and Lilly Santon”
In a world with ever increasing migration and cultural exchange, dance holds a unique power to facilitate dialogue across cultural and political boundaries. Combining an informal talk with an interactive movement session, we’ll dive into how movement can act as a tool for diplomacy, offering new ways to engage with people from different backgrounds and experiences. Participants will be encouraged to engage with the nuances of improvisation as both a personal and collective practice, experiencing how movement can communicate across borders. Whether you are a seasoned dancer, or someone just curious about how the body communicates, come ready to move, experiment and reflect. No prior experience is required—just a willingness to move and explore new ideas!
Ranging from the terrifying embrace of the slave ship's hold to the racist encoding of 'cuddly' toys, On Cuddling is a unique combination of essay and poetry that contends with the way racial violence is enacted through intimacy. Informed by Black feminist and queer poetics, Antwi focuses his lens on the suffering of Black people at the hands of state violence and racial capitalism. As radical movements grow to advance Black liberation, so too must our ways of understanding how racial capitalism embraces us all. Antwi turns to cuddling, an act we imagine as devoid of violence, and explores it as a tense transfer point of power.
*** Rescheduled to 12:00 PM (ET) ***
In this participatory workshop, Dr Mullen will look at three approaches to group improvising—1) improvising with pulse and rhythm, 2) using stimuli such as text, visuals and thematic starting points, and 3) the Search and Reflect methodology as pioneered by Phil's mentor John Stevens, a key figure in European Free Group Improvisation. Please bring an instrument if possible.
*** Rescheduled to 12:00 PM (ET) ***
In this workshop, Priya will introduce her approach to music psychotherapy in the context of adult mental health, inviting attendees to participate in exploring the role that clinical improvisation can play in accessing and processing emotions, building social connection, and developing personal insights and growth.
*Postponed until Spring 2025* Please join co-editors Eric Fillion, Sean Mills, and Désirée Rochat for a conversation around and about Statesman of the Piano: Jazz, Race, and History in the Life of Lou Hooper (MQUP, 2023). The book “sparks new conversations about Hooper's legacy while shedding light on the cross-border travels and wartime experiences of Black musicians, the politics of archiving and curating, and the connections between race and music in the twentieth century.”
In this combined presentation and workshop, Justine Woods will discuss garment-making as research-creation with particular focus on the role garments play in resisting settler colonial displacement of Indigenous ontologies and bodies to place. Informed by her PhD dissertation research, Justine will expand upon the concept of ‘re-stitching’ as both a theoretical framework and embodied practice in exploring how the act of garment-making done by the Indigenous body can regenerate Indigenous ontology and re-stitch new worlds and futurities.
International Institute for Critical Studies in Improvisation IICSI House,
9 University Avenue East,
Guelph, ON,
N1H 1M8
Tel: 519-824-4120 Ext. 53885 | [email protected]
Send mail to:
IICSI House
9 University Avenue East
Guelph, Ontario
N1H 1M8
improv@uoguelph.ca
