Name: Sounds Like Us 2.0 | Final Showcase
Start: 2025-04-02T14:30:00-04:00
End: 2025-04-02T16:00:00-04:00
Location: ImprovLab

January 2025
Thinking Spaces: Justine Woods, “Re-stitching as Methodology: Garment-making as a Transformative Practice in Research-creation”

January 21, 2025 @ 12:00 pm - 1:30 pm

ImprovLab MacKinnon Room 108, 87 Trent Lane, University of Guelph, Guelph, Ontario, Canada

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.

Free
Wet Sounds Series Presents: Pantayo

January 25, 2025 @ 7:00 pm - 9:30 pm

ImprovLab MacKinnon Room 108, 87 Trent Lane, University of Guelph, Guelph, Ontario, Canada

On Saturday January 25th, 2025, Wet Sounds: feminist + queer music practices in the polycrisis presents a performance and conversation with PANTAYO. The second guest in the series hosted by Musagetes in Guelph, Pantayo are queer Filipinx kulintang gong punks based in Tkaronto, Canada. The ensemble combines traditional Kulintang music from the Philippines with contemporary influences and experimental sounds derived from their experiences as queer diasporic Filipinxs on Turtle Island.

$15
February 2025
Book Launch—Soundin’ Canaan: Black Canadian Poetry, Music, and Citizenship, by Paul db Watkins

February 6, 2025 @ 7:00 pm - 8:30 pm

The Vault Cafe 499 Wallace Street, Nanaimo, BC, Canada

We are pleased to announce the initial book launch for Soundin’ Canaan: Black Canadian Poetry, Music, and Citizenship, by Improvising Futures team member, Paul db Watkins on Thursday, February 6, at…

$5
Sam Newsome—The Popeye Effect: Unlocking the Artist’s Power to Transcend (talk + solo concert)

February 9, 2025 @ 1:00 pm - 3:00 pm

Silence 46 Essex Street, Guelph, Ontario, Canada

In this masterclass, we explore the importance of moving beyond our earthly selves to reach our true creative potential when improvising. As artists, our improvisational journeys can take us from the explainable to the unexplainable, from the ordinary to the extraordinary. Using the iconic cartoon character Popeye the Sailor Man as a metaphor, we will discuss what true transcendence looks like in the creative process. We will also delve into how to employ extended techniques and instrument preparations as methods of transcendence, pushing the boundaries of traditional performance. Active participation from fellow musicians is highly encouraged.

$20
Thinking Spaces: Andrew Goldman, “The Cognition of Musical Improvisation: Theories and Experiments”

February 11, 2025 @ 12:00 pm - 1:30 pm

ImprovLab MacKinnon Room 108, 87 Trent Lane, University of Guelph, Guelph, Ontario, Canada

Improvisation is a challenging topic to study using the theories and methods of cognitive science owing to the difficulty of defining it, and the diversity of improvisatory practices. I share my theoretical frameworks for engaging this challenge as well as the results from some behavioral and neuroscientific studies. Ultimately, I draw upon improvisation as a case study for exploring the difficulties of using science to understand music more generally.

Free
[Cancelled due to Inclement Weather] | hakosalo_tuohino: “How a Sound Follows Another” (Talk @ ImprovLab)

February 13, 2025 @ 10:00 am - 11:30 am

ImprovLab MacKinnon Room 108, 87 Trent Lane, University of Guelph, Guelph, Ontario, Canada

Cancelled due to inclement weather |
In this discussion, we'll shed light on the art-theoretical approaches of the hakosalo_tuhino duo. Our improvised music comes from the archaic kantele playing tradition, where you are in the music instead of making it. Drawing from the deep listening method, our sonic expression is a spatial and temporal experience that cannot be recorded and repeated.

Free
[Cancelled due to Inclement Weather] | hakosalo_tuohino: “How a Sound Follows Another” (Performance @ Silence)

February 13, 2025 @ 3:30 pm - 4:30 pm

Silence 46 Essex Street, Guelph, Ontario, Canada

Our improvised music comes from the archaic kantele playing tradition, where you are in the music instead of making it. Drawing from the deep listening method, our sonic expression is a spatial and temporal experience that cannot be recorded and repeated.

Free
IBPOC ARTISTS NETWORK TOUR: FROM WORDS TO ACTION—Newton Moraes and Meryem Alaoui

February 28, 2025 @ 7:30 pm - 9:30 pm

ImprovLab MacKinnon Room 108, 87 Trent Lane, University of Guelph, Guelph, Ontario, Canada

Please join Guelph Dance and the International Institute for Critical Studies in Improvisation on February 28, 2025 at 7:30 PM (ET) for an evening of dance with Newton Moraes and Meryem Alaoui at ImprovLab. The program features two solo works by these fantastic artists. This presentation is courtesy of IBPOC ARTISTS NETWORK TOUR: FROM WORDS TO ACTION, initiated by wind in the leaves collective.

$11.98
March 2025
Thinking Spaces: Fron Reilly, “Acoustic Innovation: Is There Anything Left to Invent?”

March 4, 2025 @ 12:00 pm - 1:30 pm

ImprovLab MacKinnon Room 108, 87 Trent Lane, University of Guelph, Guelph, Ontario, Canada

This talk will tell the story of four innovative acoustic musical instruments that Fron have created over the past few years. It will focus on the creative process in which he accesses his lifelong fascination with sound and delve into his background in physics to invent new ways of connecting the vibrations of strings to the human ear and brain.”

Free
Immersive Soundscape Music

March 25, 2025 @ 7:00 pm - 8:30 pm

ImprovLab MacKinnon Room 108, 87 Trent Lane, University of Guelph, Guelph, Ontario, Canada

Andra McCartney’s radio piece Learning to Walk is an experimental radio story made in 2004 about traumatic memory, love, and walking. Her piece Waiting games and widespread smoke (feat. Narcy) from 2018 is based on a train trip from Toronto to Vancouver reflecting on the widespread smoke and freight delays that structured it during the 2018 fires prevalent in Western Canada at the time.

Darren Copeland’s works on the program combine acousmatic and soundscape approaches to sound creation. His piece …while working and walking is based on exploring his new rural home on foot back in 2015 and while cleaning up and removing old building structures. His piece On Schedule from 2003 transforms a soundscape recording from the World Soundscape Project collection at Simon Fraser University. Synthetic sounds are also generated by plotting the times of station stops on the multi-day route from London Waterloo to Moskva Byelorusski.

Free
Turntable Trio: Maria Chavez, Mariam Rezaei, Evicshen—Wet Sounds #3

March 30, 2025 @ 6:30 pm - 10:00 pm

ImprovLab MacKinnon Room 108, 87 Trent Lane, University of Guelph, Guelph, Ontario, Canada

On Sunday March 30th, 2025, Wet Sounds: feminist + queer music practices in the polycrisis, presents a performance and conversation with female pioneers of new turntablism, Turntable Trio—Maria Chavez, Mariam Rezaei, and Evicshen (Victoria Shen).

By Donation
April 2025
Sounds Like Us 2.0 | Final Showcase

April 2, 2025 @ 2:30 pm - 4:00 pm

ImprovLab MacKinnon Room 108, 87 Trent Lane, University of Guelph, Guelph, Ontario, Canada

Sounds Like Us—presented by the International Institute for Critical Studies in Improvisation (IICSI) and the Campus Friends (CF) program—brings professional musicians into collaboration with community members of varying developmental and physical needs through a series of fun and playful improvisation-based workshops. This season facilitators include postdoctoral fellow jashen edwards, PhD student Joe Sorbara, and community musician special guest, Valentina Morelli.

Free

January 2025

February 2025

March 2025

April 2025

Research Partners