IICSI

ImprovLab Open House Sessions, April 18
2024-04-18 13:00 - 15:00 (America/Toronto) | ImprovLab, MacKinnon Room 108, 87 Trent Lane, University of Guelph, Guelph, Ontario, N1G 1Y4, Canada
Please join us for a schedule of Thursday afternoon (1–3 pm ET) ImprovLab Open House Sessions! The sessions will take place in person at ImprovLab, MCKN 108 at the University of Guelph. Bring any instrument and be ready to improvise!

The full schedule is as follows:
February 8th (Electronic Music Session); immediately following Thinking Spaces: Colin Harrington
February 29th
March 7th
March 21st
April 4th
April 18th
May 2nd
Hope to see you there!

(Cancelled) ImprovLab Open House Sessions, May 2
2024-05-02 13:00 - 15:00 (America/Toronto) | ImprovLab, MacKinnon Room 108, 87 Trent Lane, University of Guelph, Guelph, Ontario, N1G 1Y4, Canada

Deep Listening: The Story of Pauline Oliveros - Film Screening - ArtsEverywhere Festival
2024-05-05 16:00 - 19:00 (America/Toronto) | ImprovLab, MacKinnon Room 108, 87 Trent Lane, University of Guelph, Guelph, Ontario, N1G 1Y4, Canada
Please join us on Sunday, May 5th, from 4–7 pm (ET) for a screening of “Deep Listening: The Story of Pauline Oliveros.” The screening will take place in person at ImprovLab, MCKN 108 at the University of Guelph. The event is part of the ArtsEverywhere Festival.
A post-screening conversation with director Daniel Weintraub (remote), executive producer IONE (remote) and collaborator Anne Bourne will be moderated by Ajay Heble.
More Information about the Event
Daniel Weintraub’s new feature-length film, “Deep Listening: The Story of Pauline Oliveros“, is a documentary that traces the life and work of visionary composer, musician, teacher, technological innovator, and humanitarian Pauline Oliveros (1932–2016).
Pauline was one of the world’s original electronic musicians, the only woman amongst notable post-war American composers, a master accordion player, a teacher and mentor to musicians, a gateway to music and sound for non-musicians, and a technical innovator who helped develop everything from tools that allow musicians to play together while in different countries, to software that enables those with severe disabilities to create beautiful music.
Produced in collaboration with executive producer IONE, Oliveros’ partner in life and work, and the Ministry of Maåt, Inc., the film combines rare archival footage, live performances, and unreleased music with appearances by Terry Riley, Anna Halprin, Ione, Linda Montano, Laurie Anderson, Thurston Moore, Alvin Lucier, Claire Chase, Miya Masaoka, Morton Subotnick, Tony Martin, Ramon Sender, and many more ground-breaking artists.
Please find a preview on the festival event webpage.
ImprovLab is a physically accessible venue. The Q&A portion of this event will feature live transcription and ASL interpretation. For details on the festival’s accessibility, please visit our general accessibility page.

Live Music: Anne Bourne/Joe Sorbara/Ajay Heble Trio - ArtsEverywhere Festival
2024-05-05 20:00 - 21:00 (America/Toronto) | Ontario
Please join us on Sunday, May 5th, from 8–9 pm (ET) for a live music performance by the Anne Bourne/Joe Sorbara/Ajay Heble Trio. The performance will take place in person at ImprovLab, MCKN 108 at the University of Guelph. The event acts the finale of the ArtsEverywhere Festival.
Refreshments will be served before the performance.
More About the Event
For this special closing night concert at the ArtsEverywhere Festival, these three friends will come together to perform for the first time in a trio setting. Their music will be freely improvised and animated by deep and attentive listening, joyful creative interaction, meditative soundscapes, and possible nods to various influences and traditions ranging from Pauline Oliveros to Indian ragas to free jazz and beyond.
ImprovLab is a physically accessible venue. For details on the festival’s accessibility, please visit our general accessibility page.

"Has it started...?" by Rebecca Barnstaple - Artist Residency at ImprovLab
2024-05-27 10:00 - 18:00 (America/Toronto) | ImprovLab, MacKinnon Room 108, 87 Trent Lane, University of Guelph, Guelph, Ontario, N1G 1Y4, Canada
Please join us, starting Monday, May 27, at 10:00 AM(ET) for “Has it Started…?” with IICSI Postdoctoral Fellow Rebecca Barnstaple. There will be a schedule of events each day until May 30th. “Has it started…?” is a 4 day open-door artist residency and practice-based inquiry at the ImprovLab, University of Guelph.
On May 31, at 11:00 AM (ET), Dr. Barnstaple has scheduled an Open Class, preceded by a lecture/webinar on adapted dance (Danse adaptee pour le bien-etre). Register here for the Open Class!
This presentation will take place in person at ImprovLab, MCKN 108 at the University of Guelph. The event is free and open to all.

More About the Residency

Adapted dance is a deeply improvisational practice, created in relation with people of diverse mobilities and ages. Community members and visitors are invited to join Rebecca Barnstaple for a drop-in class at 11am on May 31st as a Friday kick-off for the Guelph Dance Festival. Rebecca has worked extensively with partners in dance/movement therapy, IMPROVment, dance for Parkinsons, and dance for health internationally. Inspired by this broad scope of practice, we will explore the possibilities present for the bodies in attendance. All are welcome!
The Open Class will be preceded by a LIVE broadcast of Danse adaptee pour le bien-etre, a webinar exploring programs and research associated with adapted dance offered in partnership with the National Centre for Dance Therapy and Chigamik Community Health Centre.

More About the Presenter
Rebecca Barnstaple (PhD Dance Studies; Graduate Program in Neuroscience 2020, York University) is the Manager of Community Initiatives, Research and Innovation at Centre Communautaire Chigamik Community Health Centre, Midland, Ontario, and an IICSI Postdoctoral Fellow, University of Guelph. A graduate of the National Centre for Dance Therapy at Les Grands Ballets Canadiens (2015), she provides education and training in dance therapy and associated research globally. She has been involved in the development and delivery of improvisational arts and health initiatives in the United States (IMPROVment, Wake Forest University) and Canada (SingWell, Toronto Metropolitan University; Piece of Mind, McGill; Dance for Health, Nova Scotia) and serves in a leadership capacity for professional organizations including the Dance Movement Therapy Association of Canada (Accreditation and Certification Committee), the American Dance Therapy Association (Research and Practice Committee), and the International Association of Dance Medicine Science (International Benchmarking Standards Task Force, Dance for Health Committee). Rebecca directs the Research to Practice Lab for ZOE School of Dance Movement Therapy in Basel, Switzerland.

CFP - The 2024 Guelph Jazz Festival Colloquium, "Sheets of Sound: Jazz, Improvisation, and Liner Notes"
2024-05-31 | Ontario
The International Institute for Critical Studies in Improvisation (IICSI), in partnership with the Guelph Jazz Festival and the University of Guelph, invites proposals for presentations at our annual interdisciplinary international conference. The colloquium will take place September 11-13, 2024, as part of the 31st annual Guelph Jazz Festival. Featuring panel discussions, debates, performances, workshops, keynote presentations, and critical conversations among researchers, artists, and audiences, the colloquium fosters a spirit of collaborative, boundary-defying inquiry and dialogue, and an international exchange of cultural forms and knowledges.
In his liner notes for John Coltrane’s 1958 recording Soultrane, jazz critic Ira Gitler famously coined the phrase “sheets of sound” to describe Coltrane’s unique style of improvisational playing. It’s an apt phrase not only for attempting to capture in writing the spirit and energy of Coltrane’s distinctive style, but also for acting as a metaphoric descriptor for the very genre of liner notes. As an important part of the history of jazz and creative improvised music, liner notes might themselves be considered as something akin to “sheets of sound” that have played a vital role in shaping our understanding of the music.
“Part publication relations blitz, part advertisement, part advance directive for hipsters, part forum for writers hoping to match chops with the musicians they adored, liner notes accomplished several tasks at once” writes Timothy Gray in his essay on “Jazz Criticism and Liner Notes” in the recently published volume Jazz and American Culture. This year’s edition of The Guelph Jazz Festival Colloquium invites presentations, prompts, and creative responses that reflect on some of these tasks, and that take up the question of what it means to use the liner note genre to write about jazz and creative improvised music.
In what ways have liner notes shaped the way the music is received? To what extent do liner notes contribute to the ways in which we negotiate and construct meaning about the music, how we understand history, how and why we listen? In what ways have digital dissemination and streaming services disrupted our notions of liner notes? And how has this shifted listener/audience understanding about their favourite artists?
Citing the “far-out notes produced by Sun Ra, John Coltrane,” and others, Daphne Brooks in her book Liner Notes for the Revolution explains that “liner notes hold out the possibility of operating as critical, fictional, or experimental works of writing in and of themselves. Conventional liner notes,” she suggests, “often walk a fine line between pedagogy and socialization, between sociohistorical and cultural reportage and heuristic conditioning (here’s how and why to love the artist in question). The most ambitious notes strive toward the narrative realization, or the narrative reimagining, of a sonic collection of songs altogether.” What, then, does it mean to engage in a narrative realization or reimagining of music? What are some of the critical, fictional, conceptual, or experimental forms and practices being advanced by writers of liner notes? What is it like to hear about the music from the artist’s perspective, and how might this shape the listener’s sonic experience? What is the future of liner notes in an age dominated by the digital delivery and dissemination of music? Does writing liner notes constitute a lost art or is the practice enjoying a resurgence? In what ways do archived/archival forms of liner notes play into thinking and writing about jazz and creative improvised music today? And what roles do artwork, design and layout play in the presentation and impact of liner notes and the reception of an album?
We invite presentations that address these (and other related) questions and concerns, as well as creative work that takes up the conference prompts. We are particularly interested in interdisciplinary presentations that speak to both an academic audience and a general public. We also invite presenters to submit completed versions of their papers and presentations to our peer‐reviewed journal, Critical Studies in Improvisation/Études critiques en improvisation (www.criticalimprov.com) for consideration.
Please send (500 word) proposals (for 15-minute delivery—alternate formats may also be considered) and a short bio by May 31, 2024, to Dr. Ajay Heble at jazzcoll@uoguelph.ca

IF 2024: Silence-Producing Machine
2024-06-26 20:30 - 2024-06-29 22:30 (America/Toronto) | Fonoteca Nacional de México, Francisco Sosa 383, Barrio de Santa Catarina 04010, Coyoacán, Ciudad de México, Mexico City, Mexico
Our fifth annual Improvisation Festival runs from June 26–29, 2024.

IF 2024 will feature robust, in-person programming inside the Fonoteca Nacional de México, in Mexico City—our first international iteration—and folks around the globe can tune in online for a stream of live events.
Watch Here!
Centred on the theme Silence-Producing Machine, IF 2024 will showcase legendary and emerging improvisational performers from “the territories of the ñ.”
For a full schedule and more information, please head to the IF 2024 website!
IF 2024 is a partnered project between the International Institute for Critical Studies in Improvisation (IICSI) in Guelph, Ontario, Canada, and 17, Institute of Critical Studies in Mexico City, Mexico.
More About the Festival
IF is an around-the-clock celebration of improvised arts.
Founded by Dr. Ajay Heble (Founder and former Artistic Director, Guelph Jazz Festival) and presented by the International Institute for Critical Studies in Improvisation, IF (Improvisation Festival) is a 24-hour celebration of creative art-making showcasing new, improvised works. Created in response to the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, this annual Festival is dedicated to showcasing an incredible array of new, original performances by improvising artists of all disciplines, for audiences residing around our home in Guelph, Ontario, as well as digital attendees from all around the world.
Since the Festival’s inception in 2020, IF has featured 400+ artists of all artistic disciplines hailing from over 25 countries. Through digital video livestreams and simultaneous international radio broadcasts, IF has reached thousands of attendees from 55+ countries.

Improvising Care - McGill/Montreal, October 5–9, 2024
2024-07-20 | Ontario
Improvising Care
McGill/Montreal
Oct 5-9, 2024
“In a democratic society art should be the location where everyone can witness the joy, pleasure, and power that emerges when there is freedom of expression….” bell hooks, “Workers for Artistic freedom”
“Healing can occur . . . when one’s inner experience is made manifest and accepted by others.” Pauline Oliveros, Sonic Meditations
Recent history, from COVID through climate change, massive displacements of people, a worrying increase in various forms of totalitarianism, unjust wars (are there any other kinds?) the rapid rise of neo-liberalism (one can easily multiply this list) has both placed a greater focus on, and need for, care, and at the same time radically reduced the structures from which care often operates. As traditional institutions of care are denuded of resources, and governments implement policies that make care simultaneously more difficult to enact, yet that much more needed, it is fair to say we are facing a crisis of care. How can art and artists implement care in their practices? How should society care for artists, and artists for each other, and how can art itself be a tool for care and how should artists interact with communities in caring ways? Given improvisation’s ability to creatively and imaginatively find ways to modify existing structures, subvert norms and implement new forms of sociality, do we perhaps now more than ever need to improvise new models of care?
Some topics might include:
– How can artists work ethically in community, showing care for them?
– What would a society that cares for its artists look like, what policies and structures would be called for?
– How can art itself both model care and implement care—how can art be used to care for ourselves and others?
– How does putting care front and centre in artistic practice problematize a host of traditional assumptions about what art is and what it isn’t?
– How can new technologies both be used to create new possibilities for care, and themselves be the subjects of care?
We invite contributions addressing the topic of care and the arts, with an emphasis on the improvisatory. Contributions can be varied, traditional papers, panels, discussions, performances, mixed-media, videos, interventions—we place no limitations per se on what you might want to contribute, except that the linkage with the theme should be clear, and technically the contribution should not require excessive equipment, set up, staff, etc.
Some of this event will be dedicated to research and performance emerging out of the COST-Funded Toolkit of Care project (https://toolkitof.care). This pan-European project focuses on ways in which artists can model care, enact principles of care in their artistic practices, and create networks of mutual care.
We will be partnering with Art in the Margins’ Festival Flux Festival, which will run concurrently, affording us fun evening performances!
THIS CALL IS NOT DIRECTED ONLY TO ACADEMICS! We seek out contributions from community members/organizations, independent artists and researchers, or anyone with an interest in this topic.
Please send your proposal to: eric.lewis@mcgill.ca by July 20. Please put in the subject heading “improvising care”. Be clear about what you are proposing. If it involves other participants, please name them with contact info. If you have particular tech needs/space needs be clear about them. Also let us know the length of time you ideally would need—flexibility here is helpful (e.g., 25-40 mins, is better than just 40 mins!). Please limit proposals to one page.
While we will endeavor to have all our spaces wheelchair accessible, please let us know in your proposal if you have any particular needs with respect to access or adaptability (or anything else that will allow us to make the event as welcoming to you as possible!).
This event is a partnership between IICSI, LUC, Toolkitofcare, and Arts in the Margins

IICSI Co-Presents: The Messthetics and James Brandon Lewis - Hillside Festival 2024
2024-07-20 22:00 - 23:00 (America/Toronto) | Guelph Lake Conservation Area, 7743 Conservation Road, Guelph, Ontario, N1H 6J1, Canada
Please join us on Saturday, July 20 at 10:00 PM (ET) for “The Messthetics and James Brandon Lewis” at Hillside Festival 2024!
This performance will take place in person on Guelph Lake Island. Tickets are available on the Festival Website.
More About This Event:
The Hillside Community Festival is a not-for-profit music festival that celebrates creativity through artistic expression, community engagement, and environmental leadership. This year, Hillside Festival runs from July 19–21.
More About the Artists:
One of the most iconic rhythm sections in modern music, drummer Brendan Canty and bassist Joe Lally were the insistent engine of DC post-hardcore legends Fugazi for over 15 years. In 2016, they formed Messthetics with guitar virtuoso Anthony Pirog, and released two albums of turbulent, propulsive, groove-laden instrumental art rock. Drawing on jazz, punk, dub, and free improv, they’re equally at home in an expansive take on Sonny Sharrock’s “Once Upon a Time” as they are in blazing, math-metal riff barrages.
In late-2021, they were joined onstage by acclaimed saxophonist James Brandon Lewis, and sparks flew. Lally recalls a full-throttle passage when Lewis and Pirog began trading solos. As the intensity escalated, the bassist felt simultaneously challenged and exhilarated. “You’re just holding on and going, it sounds great,” he remembers telling himself. “Just keep going!” Thankfully for fans of next-level, genre-defying music, they have. Called “one of the modern titans of the tenor” by All About Jazz, the ecstatic fervour of James Brandon Lewis’ playing points back to John Coltrane, Pharoah Sanders, and the rich tradition of the Impulse! label–a tradition that the combustive quartet is now a part of with their eponymous 2024 release. For his part, Lewis relishes the chance to plug into the power of the Messthetics’ punk-adjacent milieu, calling their provocative real-time musical conversation a “high point of musical bonding and purely unapologetic energy! When you hear the Messthetics by themselves, that shit is cranking. And I’m always signing up to crank.”

"Aerials" with François Houle LIVE at the Musée culturel de Coin-du-Banc / Corner of the Beach Cultural Museum
2024-08-12 20:00 - 21:30 (America/Toronto) | Corner of the Beach Cultural Museum, 294 route 132 est, Coin-du-Banc, Quebec, Canada
Please join us on Monday, August 12 at 8:00 PM (ET) for “Aerials with François Houle at the Musée culturel de Coin-du-Banc / Corner of the Beach Cultural Museum.”

This performance will take place in person at the Musée culturel de Coin-du-Banc / Corner of the Beach Cultural Museum, located at 294 route 132 est in Coin-du-Banc. Tickets cost $10 and will be available for purchase at the door (cash only). Please note that seating is limited.
MORE ABOUT THIS EVENT:
Aerials is a set of improvisations exploring the clarinet’s uncharted territories. Developed during a five-week residency in Italy at the 15th century Castello Civitella Ranieri, the music is complex and seductive, taking the listener inside the instrument. Technically, this project taps deeply into the clarinetist’s inclination for the unexpected, from disembodied clarinets played simultaneously to flute-like melodies. Examining the way the instrument “reacts” to various acoustical spaces, this program is virtuosity coupled with stunning lyricism.
MORE ABOUT THE ARTIST:
Clarinetist François Houle has established himself as one of today’s most inventive musicians, in all the diverse musical spheres he embraces. Inspired by collaborations with the world’s top musical innovators, François has developed a unique improvisational language, virtuosic and rich with sonic embellishment and technical extensions. He has worked with Dave Douglas, Mark Dresser, Joëlle Léandre, Benoît Delbecq, Evan Parker, Samuel Blaser, Gerry Hemingway, Marilyn Crispell, Myra Melford, René Lussier, Alexander Hawkins, John Butcher, Kris Davis, Georg Graewe, Håvard Wiik, Guillermo Gregorio, Eyvind Kang, Hasse Poulsen, and many of Canada and the International scene’s top creative music artists.
His extensive touring has led to solo appearances at major festivals across Canada, the United
States, Europe and Australia. A prolific recording artist, he has released over twenty recordings as a leader, earning multiple Juno Award and West Coast Music Award nominations. He is the founder of Afterday Audio, a record label dedicated to the documentation and dissemination of his many musical projects and collaborations. In addition, he has appeared on numerous recordings on the Songlines, Red Toucan, Leo Records, Drip Audio, PSI, Between-the-Lines, Nuscope, Spool, hat[now]ART, Redshift, and CRI labels, among others.
He has been listed on numerous occasions in DownBeat magazine’s Readers and Critics’ Polls as a “Talent Deserving Wider Recognition” and a “Rising Star”.
François studied at McGill University, went on to win the National Debut competition, and
completed his studies at Yale University. He has been an artist-in-residence at the Banff Centre for the Arts and at the Civitella Ranieri Foundation in Umbria, Italy, and was a featured soloist in the International Clarinet Association’s 2007 and 2008 ClarinetFests. He is a faculty member at the Vancouver Community College School of Music, and a former graduate clarinet studio instructor at the University of British Columbia. He served as Artistic Director of the Vancouver Creative Music Institute for five years. In 2008 he was appointed as “Associate Composer” of the Canadian Music Centre.
François Houle is a Backun artist and clinician. He plays Backun clarinets, mouthpieces, bells, and barrels. He is also a Légère Artist, performing on Signature European cut reeds.
Visit François on-line at www.francoishoule.ca
These events at Musical Improvisation at Land’s End / Coin-du-Banc en folie are made possible thanks to the generous support of the Musagetes Foundation, La société historique de Coin-du-Banc / Corner of the Beach Historical Society, La MRC du Rocher-Percé, La Ville de Percé, the Vancouver Community College Faculty Association, and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC).

François Houle and MILE Camp Participants LIVE at the Musée culturel de Coin-du-Banc / Corner of the Beach Cultural Museum
2024-08-16 16:00 - 18:00 (America/Toronto) | Corner of the Beach Cultural Museum, 294 route 132 est, Coin-du-Banc, Quebec, Canada
Please join us on Friday, August 16 at 4:00 PM (ET) for “François Houle and MILE Camp Participants LIVE at the Musée culturel de Coin-du-Banc / Corner of the Beach Cultural Museum.”

This performance will take place in person at the Musée culturel de Coin-du-Banc / Corner of the Beach Cultural Museum, located at 294 route 132 est in Coin-du-Banc. Tickets cost $10 and will be available for purchase at the door (cash only). Please note that seating is limited.
MORE ABOUT THIS EVENT:
On Monday, August 12th, at 8:00 PM (EDT), camp facilitator François Houle—improvising clarinetist extraordinaire—will perform a concert at the Musée culturel de Coin-du-Banc / Corner of the Beach Cultural Museum, located at 294 route 132 est in Coin-du-Banc. The Vancouver-based musician is one of Canada’s most renowned and innovative improvisational musicians, and his performance in this wonderful space is not to be missed.
MORE ABOUT THE ARTIST:
Clarinetist François Houle has established himself as one of today’s most inventive musicians, in all the diverse musical spheres he embraces. Inspired by collaborations with the world’s top musical innovators, François has developed a unique improvisational language, virtuosic and rich with sonic embellishment and technical extensions. He has worked with Dave Douglas, Mark Dresser, Joëlle Léandre, Benoît Delbecq, Evan Parker, Samuel Blaser, Gerry Hemingway, Marilyn Crispell, Myra Melford, René Lussier, Alexander Hawkins, John Butcher, Kris Davis, Georg Graewe, Håvard Wiik, Guillermo Gregorio, Eyvind Kang, Hasse Poulsen, and many of Canada and the International scene’s top creative music artists.
His extensive touring has led to solo appearances at major festivals across Canada, the United
States, Europe and Australia. A prolific recording artist, he has released over twenty recordings as a leader, earning multiple Juno Award and West Coast Music Award nominations. He is the founder of Afterday Audio, a record label dedicated to the documentation and dissemination of his many musical projects and collaborations. In addition, he has appeared on numerous recordings on the Songlines, Red Toucan, Leo Records, Drip Audio, PSI, Between-the-Lines, Nuscope, Spool, hat[now]ART, Redshift, and CRI labels, among others.
He has been listed on numerous occasions in DownBeat magazine’s Readers and Critics’ Polls as a “Talent Deserving Wider Recognition” and a “Rising Star”.
François studied at McGill University, went on to win the National Debut competition, and
completed his studies at Yale University. He has been an artist-in-residence at the Banff Centre for the Arts and at the Civitella Ranieri Foundation in Umbria, Italy, and was a featured soloist in the International Clarinet Association’s 2007 and 2008 ClarinetFests. He is a faculty member at the Vancouver Community College School of Music, and a former graduate clarinet studio instructor at the University of British Columbia. He served as Artistic Director of the Vancouver Creative Music Institute for five years. In 2008 he was appointed as “Associate Composer” of the Canadian Music Centre.
François Houle is a Backun artist and clinician. He plays Backun clarinets, mouthpieces, bells, and barrels. He is also a Légère Artist, performing on Signature European cut reeds.
Visit François on-line at www.francoishoule.ca
These events at Musical Improvisation at Land’s End / Coin-du-Banc en folie are made possible thanks to the generous support of the Musagetes Foundation, La société historique de Coin-du-Banc / Corner of the Beach Historical Society, La MRC du Rocher-Percé, La Ville de Percé, the Vancouver Community College Faculty Association, and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC).

Ultra-Sonic Moth Songs
2024-08-20 19:30 - 21:30 (America/Toronto) | The Moth Garden (Ignatius Jesuit Centre), 5420 Highway 6, Guelph, Ontario, n1h6j2, Canada
Please join us on Tuesday, August 20 at 7:30 PM (ET) for “Ultra-Sonic Moth Songs” with Lucy Rupert, Lisa Hirmer, Christina Kingsbury, and Ben Finley.

This performance will take place in person at the Moth Garder, located at the Ignatius Jesuit Centre, 5420 Highway 6 in Guelph. Attendees will meet at the Ignatius Farm Workshop parking lot at 7:30pm and walk out to the garden for the performance. The event is free, although seating is very limited. Preregistration is required. Please book your ticket on the Moth Garden Eventbrite page.

More About This Performance

Join us at the Moth Garden. At dusk on August 20th, experience improvised music and movement amoung the moths. Created by artists Lisa Hirmer and Christina Kingsbury, the Moth Garden is dedicated to the often underappreciated, yet vitally important nocturnal pollinators of our world. Did you know moths make music that human ears can’t hear? As the sun sets and the moths come out to play, you are invited to experience dancer Lucy Rupert and bassist Ben Finley’s interpretation of ultra-sonic moth songs.
We will meet at the Ignatius Farm Workshop parking lot at 7:30pm and walk out to the garden for the performance. The garden is a 10-15 minute walk along a gravel roadway and then mowed grass paths which have some uneven surfaces and slight inclines. The walk is less than 1km. Please let us know if this is an access barrier as we can arrange to shuttle some folks to the garden if needed. There are several straw bales and blankets around the garden for informal seating. Please contact us if you have any other access needs that we can support with.
Because the garden and event are centred around meeting other beings in their own sensory worlds, and to support human access considerations, we ask that you avoid the use of insect repellents and other scented products. We will have bug suits available, or let us know if you will bring your own. We also recommend long sleeves and pants to protect from the mosquitoes.
This workshop is part of the project Moth Garden by artists Lisa Hirmer and Christina Kingsbury.
More About the Performers
Lucy Rupert is a dancer, choreographer, art-science researcher, and writer. She has performed with Fujiwara Dance Inventions, Theatre Rusticle, Nova Dance, Anandam Dance, Sashar Zarif Dance, Puppetmongers Theatre, Circus Orange, and Chartier Danse, among others. In 2004 Lucy founded Blue Ceiling dance, an umbrella for her choreography and commissions, performing throughout Ontario, in New York, Montreal and Stuttgart, Germany. Her creations are inspired by cosmology, biology and philosophy – anything from monsters to photons to the end of the universe. Lucy has a Joint Honours BA in Dance and Music (University of Waterloo), an MA in History (University of Toronto), and currently studies philosophy through Oxford University. She lives in Toronto with her husband and son, and two feral cats, in a magical neighbourhood full of coyotes and old trees.
Lisa Hirmer is an interdisciplinary artist who works in visual media, especially photography; social practice; community collaboration, and sometimes writing. Her work is focussed on collective relationships both in human communities and in human relationships with the more-than-human world. A lot of her recent work wrestles with what it means to be living inside the climate emergency and on the edge of planetary collapse. Her work finds home both in traditional gallery contexts and an expanded field of other public and semi-public spaces and is always created with a keen awareness that multiple realities exist alongside one another.
She has shown her work across Canada and internationally including at Art Gallery of Ontario, Art Gallery of Guelph, University of Lethbridge Art Gallery, Cambridge Art Galleries, Art Gallery of Mississauga, Tom Thomson Gallery, Art Windsor-Essex, Doris McCarthy Gallery, Peninsula Arts, CAFKA, Queens Museum, and Flux Factory, among others. She has done artist residencies with Arts House Melbourne, the Santa Fe Art Institute, the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, the Centre for Contemporary Art and the Natural World, KIAC and Camargo Foundation, and was the 2022 Waterfront Toronto Artist in Residence. She has received numerous grants including from the Ontario Arts Council and Canada Council for the Arts and has a Master of Architecture from the University of Waterloo.
Christina Kingsbury’s (she/her) interdisciplinary art practice is inspired by histories of care and explores themes of place, ecology and inter-species relationships. Her work takes the form of performance, installation and social practice. Christina collaborates regularly with poets, ecologists, artists, choreographers and the public-including ecological public – to create relational works that offer a quiet and radical challenge to the commodification of life. Her work is rooted (often literally) in the Grand River watershed and treaty lands of the Mississauga’s of the Credit and part of her practice works through relationships with land as a settler person. Her solo and collaborative work has been shown as public interventions and in curated exhibitions both locally and internationally.
At the age of 14, Ben Finley plucked his first bass string. Everything changed! Immediately, things fell still, without worry, in playful possibility. Miraculously, that feeling remains. Ben Finley is a collaborative and solo performer-composer, singer, improviser, and writer grounded in creative acoustic and electric bass playing. He leads and co-leads several ensembles that cross compositional boundaries, drawing inspiration from chamber music, song forms, improvisational music making, electronics and the sound worlds of local environments. He grew up on a music festival farm (Westben) where he witnessed many ways of making music, entwined with land and creatures. Ben is the co-founder and creative director of the Westben Centre for Connection & Creativity’s Performer-Composer Residency, which since 2018 has welcomed many diverse sound explorers to collaborate, share creative music and exchange perspectives. He is also Westben’s Sustainability Coordinator, working on various environmental care initiatives on the Westben grounds. He is a current Ph.D. candidate in the Critical Studies in Improvisation program at the University of Guelph, studying music festivals and creative music practices as sites of eco-cultural regeneration. Please find more about Ben’s projects at benfinleymusic.com.
Be sure to book your ticket on the Moth Garden Eventbrite page.

2024 Guelph Jazz Festival Colloquium: "Sheets of Sound: Jazz, Improvisation, and Liner Notes"
2024-09-11 09:00 - 17:00 (America/Toronto) | ImprovLab, MacKinnon Room 108, 87 Trent Lane, University of Guelph, Guelph, Ontario, N1G 1Y4, Canada
Please join us from Wednesday, September 11–Saturday, September 14 for the 2024 Guelph Jazz Festival Colloquium in Guelph, Ontario, Canada.
This year’s event, titled “Sheets of Sound: Jazz, Improvisation, and Liner Notes,” draws inspiration from jazz critic and historian Ira Gitler’s description of legendary jazz saxophonist John Coltrane’s 1958 recording Soultrane. Gitler famously coined the phrase, “sheets of sound” to describe Coltrane’s playing. The event also takes its cues from Daphne Brooks’ recent work, Liner Notes for the Revolution: The Intellectual Life of Black Feminist Sound, highlighting the overlooked contributions of Black women in the history of popular music. Dr. Brooks, one of the colloquium’s keynote speakers, will present a compelling new work on Friday from 2:30–3:45 PM, titled “Liner Notes for the Hurricane: Crate Digging for Porgy and Bess.” The other keynote speaker, Ashley Kahn, a prolific American music historian, will deliver a presentation on Thursday from 3:45–4:45 PM, titled “Liner Noting in the Time of Streaming.”

This colloquium will take place in person at ImprovLab (Room 108 MacKinnon Building) on the University of Guelph Campus. The event is free and open to everybody.

More About This Event:
Since 1996 the Guelph Jazz Festival Colloquium, co-presented by the University of Guelph in partnership with the Guelph Jazz Festival, has brought together diverse communities of interest by providing a scholarly forum for dialogue among researchers, creative practitioners, arts presenters, and members of the general public.
The focus of this year’s colloquium is “Liner Notes”
In what ways have liner notes shaped the way the music is received? To what extent do liner notes contribute to the ways in which we negotiate and construct meaning about the music, how we understand history, how and why we listen? In what ways have digital dissemination and streaming services disrupted our notions of liner notes? And how has this shifted listener/audience understanding about their favourite artists?
The learn more about this year’s presenters and to see a full schedule, please follow this link to the colloquium web portal.

KidsAbility Play Who You Are Ensemble - Final Performance at the Guelph Jazz Festival
2024-09-14 15:00 - 16:30 (America/Toronto) | TD Market Square, Guelph, ON, Canada
Please join us on Saturday, September 14 at 3:00 PM (ET) for a public performance by 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.

More About This Event:
Since 2007, KidsAbility and the International Institute for Critical Studies in Improvisation (IICSI) have partnered to bring award-winning musicians to support youth with varying developmental and physical needs. Play Who You Are includes a FREE series of musical improvisation workshops which culminate in a FREE public performance at the Guelph Jazz Festival. The KidsAbility Play Who You Are Ensemble will be facilitated by Ben Finley.
This year, the workshops take place on August 12th (info session), 14th, 19th, 21st, and September 4th from 7-8 pm at ImprovLab, located on the University of Guelph Campus. The final culminating performance will take place at the Guelph Jazz Festival on Saturday, September 14th.
More About the Facilitator:
Ben Finley is an experienced collaborative and solo performer, composer, singer, improviser, and writer grounded in creative acoustic and electric bass playing. He leads and co-leads several ensembles and grew up on a music festival farm – Westben! He is a current Ph.D. candidate in the Critical Studies in Improvisation program at the University of Guelph.
The KidsAbility Play Who You Are Ensemble will also be joined onstage by the IICSI Improvisers-in-Residence, Jimmy Weinstein (drums, piano, guitar, composer) and Lilly Santon (vocalist, visual arts).
For more information, and to register to participate in Play Who You Are, contact Taylor Graham at improvce@uoguelph.ca.

Thinking Spaces: Jimmy Weinstein and Lilly Santon, "Building a Safe Creativity Environment"
2024-09-27 11:00 - 12:30 (America/Toronto) | ImprovLab, MacKinnon Room 108, 87 Trent Lane, University of Guelph, Guelph, Ontario, N1G 1Y4, Canada
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 IICSI’s new Twitch Stream. As always, our Thinking Spaces events are free!
To attend the talk in-person or online, RSVP via our Google Forms.

More about this talk:
Jimmy Weinstein and Lilly Santon founded Travelling School in 2002 in Padova, Italy with the mission to teach jazz and improvisation as applied to general education. Many different projects grew out of this initiative. Drawing on their life in music and in association with other musicians, they create workshops at jazz festivals, music schools and regular schools.Over the course of twenty-two years since the founding of Travelling School, Jimmy Weinstein and Lilly Santon have developed a highly effective methodology for introducing concepts taken from jazz improvisation. These concepts can be applied to general and special education situations and dynamics. Today, their introduction to these creative and educational concepts takes the shape of their workshop: Building a Safe Creativity Environment.

Some of the points that will be outlined in this workshop could be:
1. Inclusion with the self: Self inclusion exercises (most evident when one feels embarrassed).
2. High Energy Encouragement: Positive high energy received in the moment of improvisation as a teacher. Real ability to improvise a class, and how to develop this.
3. Inclusion of conflict and disruption: Using disruption as catalyst for the improvising teacher applied in real life class dynamics.
4. The Concert Game: The game of the 30 second concert presented as a game for kids.
5. Listening to jazz pieces and transposing the emotion into a solo or interactive performance/concert.
More about the Speakers:
Jimmy Weinstein / drums, piano, guitar, composer
Born in Chicago, Jimmy moved with his family to California and Spain. A Berklee College of Music alumnus ’89 and leader of a consortium of New York based ensembles, Jimmy has been on the move for over 25 years, touring the US, Europe and Japan. Major associations include recordings and tours with virtuoso improvisers, Ahmed Abdullah, Chris Cheek, Ben Monder, Satoko Fujii, Alex Harding, Jeff Parker, Oscar Noriega, Natsuki Tamura, Frank Carlberg, Elie Massias, Dan Fox, Sten Hostfalt, Masa Kamaguchi and Matt Renzi. As a sideman he has worked supporting Sheila Jordan, Noah Preminger, Rachel Gould, Greg Burk, Marcello Tonolo and Reggie Veal.
In collaboration with Abdullah, Harding and Kamaguchi he founded the adventurous and highly acclaimed melodic quartet NAM, whose album Song of Time was voted among the top 25 all time live performances by critic Kevin Whitehead. As a leader, his discography contains albums released by Fresh Sound, Clean Feed, Accurate, CIMP, El Gallo Rojo and Gunther Schuller’s GM Recordings. Among Weinstein’s current projects, is a quartet featuring the pianist extraordinaire Satoko Fujii, in addition to trumpeter Natsuki Tamura and vocalist Lilly Santon . As a teacher, Weinstein’s experience has brought forth TRAVELING SCHOOL PLAYJAZZ, an organization dedicated to conducting jazz workshops where he often performs with his students. Jimmy’s new quintet features Chris Cheek, Ben Monder, Tom Beckham and Dave Ambrosio, all musicians who he has worked with over the past 25 years, coming together to perform Jimmy’s new compositions on his latest album “Sobrinos”.
Traveling School Playjazz has been organizing the yearly jazz workshop at the acclaimed Mallorca Jazz Sa Pobla Festival since 2006. Over the years Jimmy has coordinated workshops with leading artists including Lee Konitz, Sheila Jordan, Chris Cheek, Dennis Irwin, Matt Garrison, Noah Preminger, Dan Fox, Toni Miranda, Pedro Cortejosa, Perico Sambeat, Marco Mezquida, Paolo Porta and Carlo Cattano.
Lilly / Liliana Santon / vocalist
Lilly Santon trained as an architect before venturing into the world of jazz and energy therapy. After spending her formative years in Brazil, she attended middle and high school in Padua, Italy and received her degree in architecture from the University of Venice.
Lilly lived in New York and Munich between 1980 and 2003 where she worked as an architect and studied jazz with the likes of Barry Harris, Sheila Jordan, Mark Murphy and Jay Clayton. During the 80’s in New York she performed with Don Cherry’s Collective Ensemble alongside Jim Pepper, Bob Moses, Dennis Charles and Clarence “C” Sharpe. While deepening her musical studies, she trained in bio-energetic therapy, which has been integrated into her teaching methods in private classes and workshops. In 2003, she moved to Italy and Spain, and co-founded the Cultural Association Traveling School. Lilly performs regularly with Satoko Fujii, Jimmy Weinstein Quintet, and different formations of the Traveling School Band.
Projects include Sten Hosfalt’s Microtonal Ensemble Dimensional States; vocal duet improvisations with renowned composer Constance Cooper; 2014 appereances in NYC recording sessions with Jimmy Weinstein Quintet, Noah Preminger. New collaborations 2016/2017 include Johnny Lapio’s Porta Palace featuring Satoko Fukjii, Giancarlo Schiaffini and Natsuki Tamura. Story Told By Sound a multi-media project with Elie Massias and Jimmy Weinstein.
To attend the talk in-person or online, RSVP via our Google Forms.

"Singing in the Circle," with the GCVI Chamber Choir, Carey West, and Joe Sorbara
2024-10-22 12:15 - 12:45 (America/Toronto) | “How to Draw a Tree” Wellness Circle, Johnson Green, Gordon Street, Guelph, Ontario, Canada
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!
Rain Date: Thursday, October 24.

“Singing in the Circle” is presented by HowToDrawATree.ca with support from the International Institute for Critical Studies in Improvisation, UG Grounbds, and the “Activating Art Microgrant” through the Guelph Arts Council.

SOAN and IICSI Present: "Deference Rituals and Creative Buzz: Theorizing the Creative Trajectories of Songs and Songwriters" with Taylor Price.
2024-10-23 12:00 - 13:00 (America/Toronto) | MCKN 621, 87 Trent Lane, Guelph, Ontario, N1G1Y4, Canada
Please join us on Wednesday, October 23 at 12:00 PM (ET) for the first event in the 2024–2025 SOAN Seminar Series: “Deference Rituals and Creative Buzz: Theorizing the Creative Trajectories of Songs and Songwriters” with Taylor Price.

This presentation will take place in person inside MCKN 621 at the University of Guelph (6th floor, next to the elevators). The event is free and open to everybody!

More About the Seminar
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.
More About the Presenter
Taylor Price is a postdoctoral fellow in New York University’s Department of Sociology. He completed his PhD at the University of Toronto, where he wrote a dissertation exploring how cognition, interaction, and relationships facilitate culture creation in songwriting teams. His postdoctoral research draws on ethnographic observations in music studios and interviews with music producers to understand how social interactions facilitate the linear and nonlinear dimensions of the creative process. Beyond his research on creative situations, he has also written about cultural consecration, knowledge production, and qualitative social research methods.
For more information, contact Prof. Mervyn Horgan (mhorgan@uoguelph.ca).

"SAVE THE DATE!" A Creative Community Concert with Jimmy Weinstein and Lilly Santon
2024-10-24 19:00 - 21:30 (America/Toronto) | ImprovLab, MacKinnon Room 108, 87 Trent Lane, University of Guelph, Guelph, Ontario, N1G 1Y4, Canada
Please join us on Thursday, October 24 at 7:00 PM (ET) for the culminating event of our Fall 2024 Improvisers-in-Residence Series: “SAVE THE DATE!” A Creative Community Concert with Jimmy Weinstein and Lilly Santon.

This community concert will take place in person at ImprovLab, MCKN 108 at the University of Guelph. The event is FREE and open to everybody.

More About the Event
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”
The night kicks off with an interactive, behind-the-scenes look at how multidisciplinary collaboration comes to life, as Jimmy and Lilly, along with an ensemble of creative community members from diverse artistic traditions, invite you to “peak behind the curtain” and witness their creative process.
In the second half, Jimmy and Lilly will take the stage for a more formal, concert-style performance with VERY special guests. (We can’t spill the beans yet, but you won’t want to miss it!)
More About the Performers
Jimmy Weinstein / drums, piano, guitar, composer
Born in Chicago, Jimmy moved with his family to California and Spain. A Berklee College of Music alumnus ’89 and leader of a consortium of New York based ensembles, Jimmy has been on the move for over 25 years, touring the US, Europe and Japan. Major associations include recordings and tours with virtuoso improvisers, Ahmed Abdullah, Chris Cheek, Ben Monder, Satoko Fujii, Alex Harding, Jeff Parker, Oscar Noriega, Natsuki Tamura, Frank Carlberg, Elie Massias, Dan Fox, Sten Hostfalt, Masa Kamaguchi and Matt Renzi. As a sideman he has worked supporting Sheila Jordan, Noah Preminger, Rachel Gould, Greg Burk, Marcello Tonolo and Reggie Veal.
In collaboration with Abdullah, Harding and Kamaguchi he founded the adventurous and highly acclaimed melodic quartet NAM, whose album Song of Time was voted among the top 25 all time live performances by critic Kevin Whitehead. As a leader, his discography contains albums released by Fresh Sound, Clean Feed, Accurate, CIMP, El Gallo Rojo and Gunther Schuller’s GM Recordings. Among Weinstein’s current projects, is a quartet featuring the pianist extraordinaire Satoko Fujii, in addition to trumpeter Natsuki Tamura and vocalist Lilly Santon . As a teacher, Weinstein’s experience has brought forth TRAVELING SCHOOL PLAYJAZZ, an organization dedicated to conducting jazz workshops where he often performs with his students. Jimmy’s new quintet features Chris Cheek, Ben Monder, Tom Beckham and Dave Ambrosio, all musicians who he has worked with over the past 25 years, coming together to perform Jimmy’s new compositions on his latest album “Sobrinos”.
Traveling School Playjazz has been organizing the yearly jazz workshop at the acclaimed Mallorca Jazz Sa Pobla Festival since 2006. Over the years Jimmy has coordinated workshops with leading artists including Lee Konitz, Sheila Jordan, Chris Cheek, Dennis Irwin, Matt Garrison, Noah Preminger, Dan Fox, Toni Miranda, Pedro Cortejosa, Perico Sambeat, Marco Mezquida, Paolo Porta and Carlo Cattano.
Lilly / Liliana Santon / vocalist
Lilly Santon trained as an architect before venturing into the world of jazz and energy therapy. After spending her formative years in Brazil, she attended middle and high school in Padua, Italy and received her degree in architecture from the University of Venice.
Lilly lived in New York and Munich between 1980 and 2003 where she worked as an architect and studied jazz with the likes of Barry Harris, Sheila Jordan, Mark Murphy and Jay Clayton. During the 80’s in New York she performed with Don Cherry’s Collective Ensemble alongside Jim Pepper, Bob Moses, Dennis Charles and Clarence “C” Sharpe. While deepening her musical studies, she trained in bio-energetic therapy, which has been integrated into her teaching methods in private classes and workshops. In 2003, she moved to Italy and Spain, and co-founded the Cultural Association Traveling School. Lilly performs regularly with Satoko Fujii, Jimmy Weinstein Quintet, and different formations of the Traveling School Band.
Projects include Sten Hosfalt’s Microtonal Ensemble Dimensional States; vocal duet improvisations with renowned composer Constance Cooper; 2014 appereances in NYC recording sessions with Jimmy Weinstein Quintet, Noah Preminger. New collaborations 2016/2017 include Johnny Lapio’s Porta Palace featuring Satoko Fukjii, Giancarlo Schiaffini and Natsuki Tamura. Story Told By Sound a multi-media project with Elie Massias and Jimmy Weinstein.

Thinking Spaces: Melissa Noventa, "Movement Across Borders: Improvisation, Diplomacy, and Transcultural Dialogues"
2024-10-25 11:00 - 12:30 (America/Toronto) | Ontario
Please join us on Friday, October 25 at 11:00 AM (ET) for Thinking Spaces: “Movement Across Borders: Improvisation, Diplomacy, and Transcultural Dialogues” with Melissa Noventa, accompanied by percussionist Mario Allende.

This presentation will take place in person at ImprovLab, MCKN 108 at the University of Guelph, as well as online via IICSI’s new Twitch Stream. As always, our Thinking Spaces events are free!
To attend the talk in-person or online, RSVP via our Google Forms.
More About the Workshop
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!
More About the Presenter
Melissa Noventa is a dancer and ethnographer originally from Guelph, Ontario. She has over 15 years of experience performing and teaching a wide range of dance genres, including classical, contemporary, urban, West African, Latin, and Afro-Caribbean vocabularies. Melissa has collaborated with renowned institutions such as NYU Tisch and performed alongside a diverse range of artists from Canada’s Arcade Fire to some of Cuba’s premier folkloric ensembles. Most recently, she performed in the Obeah Opera which toured South Africa over the summer. Melissa holds a BFA and MA in Dance from York University and is currently a PhD candidate at Queen’s University where her research focuses on cultural diplomacy through music and dance, with a particular emphasis on the relationship between Canada and Cuba.
For this presentation, Melissa will be accompanied by percussionist Mario Allende.

My Sextortion Diary - Co-presented by the Guelph Film Festival and Ed Video
2024-11-02 19:30 - 21:00 (America/Toronto) | ImprovLab, MacKinnon Room 108, 87 Trent Lane, University of Guelph, Guelph, Ontario, N1G 1Y4, Canada
Please join us on Saturday, November 2 at 7:30 PM (ET) for the a screening of “My Sextortion Diary,” directed by Patricia Franquesa (Spain), co-presented by the Guelph Film Festival and Ed Video.

Patricia Franquesa ⋅ Spain ⋅ 64 min ⋅ Full Subtitles

This film screening will take place in person at ImprovLab, MCKN 108 at the University of Guelph. The event is $15 or Pay What You Want.
More About the Event
The Guelph Film Festival is back from November 1st–9th, showing films about our world and relationships, with themes of resistance, inclusion, and care!
In collaboration with Ed Video, the GFF will be screening Patricia Franquesa’s My Sextortion Diary at the ImprovLab. The film documents the experience of the filmmaker after her laptop is stolen and an anonymous hacker begins sending intimate images of her to her contacts, demanding payment to stop. Realizing that thousands of others have had a similar experience, and that the authorities will be of little help, Franquesa takes it on herself to figure out a way to end this situation. Franquesa tells her story with humour and candour, via texts, emails, and phone calls, refusing to be shamed, and “reclaiming the fragments of her body.”
After the screening, the audience will be able to take in Intimate Power, “a media arts exploration of vulnerability online and living in a digital culture.”
The suggested admission for this event is $15, but attendees are free to pay what they want—GFF would rather you come if interested than miss out because of the ticket cost, so please do come on out!
Grab your tickets here!

On Cuddling: Loved to Death in the Racial Embrace—Reading and Conversation with Dr. Phanuel Antwi (UBC)
2024-11-13 13:00 - 14:15 (America/Toronto) | ImprovLab, MacKinnon Room 108, 87 Trent Lane, University of Guelph, Guelph, Ontario, N1G 1Y4, Canada
Please join us on Wednesday, November 13 at 1:00 PM (ET) for On Cuddling: Loved to Death in the Racial Embrace—a Reading and Conversation with Dr. Phanuel Antwi (UBC)
This event will take place in person at ImprovLab, MCKN 108 at the University of Guelph. This event is free and open to everybody!

More About the Event
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.
More About the Presenter
Dr. Phanuel Antwi is the Canada Research Chair in Black Arts and Epistemologies in the Department of English Language and Literatures at the University of British Columbia. He is an artist, teacher and organizer concerned with race, poetics, movements, intimacy, and struggle. He works with text, dance, film, and photography to intervene in artistic, academic, and public spaces. He is a curator, activist, and associate professor. He is an alumnus of the U of G and a research team member with the IICSI.
Presented by Interdisciplinary Programs, the International Institute for Critical Studies in Improvisation, and the Office of Academic Equity and Anti-Racism

Thinking Spaces: Phil Mullen, "Ways Into Improvisation"
2024-11-15 12:00 - 13:30 (America/Toronto) | ImprovLab, MacKinnon Room 108, 87 Trent Lane, University of Guelph, Guelph, Ontario, N1G 1Y4, Canada
*** Rescheduled to 12:00 PM (ET) ***
Please join us on Friday, November 15 at 12:00 PM (ET) for Thinking Spaces: “Ways Into Improvisation” with Phil Mullen.
This presentation will take place in person at ImprovLab, MCKN 108 at the University of Guelph. As always, our Thinking Spaces events are free!

To attend the talk in-person or online, RSVP via our Google Forms.
More About the Workshop
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.
More About the Presenter
Phil Mullen has worked for forty years developing music with people who are socially excluded. He specializes in working with excluded children and young people at risk. He has run workshops, seminars and training in 28 countries across Europe, North and South America, Australia and Asia.
Phil has a PHD from Winchester University and has written a number of book chapters on musical inclusion including for the Oxford Handbook of Community Music (2018). Phil’s book “Challenging Voices: Music making with young people excluded from school” is published by Peter Lang.

Thinking Spaces: Priya Zalis, "Clinical Improvisation in Music Psychotherapy"
2024-11-22 12:00 - 13:30 (America/Toronto) | ImprovLab, MacKinnon Room 108, 87 Trent Lane, University of Guelph, Guelph, Ontario, N1G 1Y4, Canada
*** Rescheduled to 12:00 PM (ET) ***
Please join us on Friday, November 22 at 12:00 PM (ET) for Thinking Spaces: “Clinical Improvisation in Music Psychotherapy” with Priya Zalis.

This presentation will take place in person at ImprovLab, MCKN 108 at the University of Guelph. As always, our Thinking Spaces events are free!
To attend the talk in-person or online, RSVP via our Google Forms.
More About this Workshop:
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.
More About the Presenter:
Priya Zalis (RP, MTA, MMT) is a music therapist, psychotherapist, and educator working in adult inpatient mental health and addictions in Guelph, Ontario, Canada. She holds a Master’s in Music Therapy (Wilfrid Laurier University) and a Diploma in Gestalt Psychotherapy (Gestalt Institute of Toronto), and has prior experience in hospice, oncology, long-term care, and community mental health settings. Current research explores the impacts of group music therapy in trauma processing and issues related to diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging in Canadian music therapy. She loves spending time with her family and getting lost in a good book.
To attend the talk in-person or online, RSVP via our Google Forms.

IMPR 6030: Research Methods Symposium
2024-11-27 13:00 - 15:45 (America/Toronto) | University of Guelph, MacKinnon Building, 87 Trent Ln, Guelph, Ontario, N1G 1Y4, Canada
Please join us on Wednesday, November 27, from 1:00 PM–3:45 PM for the “IMPR 6030: Research Methods Symposium,” with Simon Flint, Mark Leroy, and Georgia Simms.
This event will take place in person at MacKinnon Building, Room 203 at the University of Guelph. Light snacks and beverages will be provided. The Symposium is free and open to everybody!
More About the Event
The University of Guelph’s newest IMPR cohort—Georgia Simms, Mark Leroy, and Simon Flint—have been hard at work this semester thinking and writing their way through their research topics, questions, and methodological frameworks. A significant part of research, especially in its early stages, is to come together to listen, share ideas, locate convergences, offer critique, and grow together as a supportive scholarly community.
Each week this semester we have been engaged in such activities. Now, we are pleased to invite the wider research community to join us for a few hours as the three present their work. Presentations will be twenty minutes with an additional ten to fifteen minutes allotted for Q&A.
Following is a list of presentation titles:

Simon Flint | “Stitching Queer Narratives: A Practice-Led Exploration of Improv Quilting”

Mark Leroy | “Ordinary Boy: Writing a Fictive Coming of Age Memoir based on Familial Intergenerational Trauma as a Rite of Passage”

Georgia Simms | “We Might As Well Dance: A Research Creation Case Study”

Feel free to reach out to their instructors, jashen and Lauren, if you have any questions: jashen@uoguelph.ca , springl@uoguelph.ca.
More About the Presenters
Simon Flint, originally from Calgary, Alberta, has received both a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Performance Production and Design, and a Master of Arts in Fashion from Toronto Metropolitan University. Simon is a practicing textile artist and designer; whose work explore craft, experimental design, and sustainable practices interwoven with queer and feminist theory. Throughout his career he has worked in an assortment of roles within theatre, both as a designer and a technician, as well as in academic institutions as a teaching assistant, costume coordinator and social media specialist. Presently, On top of his Ph.D. studies Simon is the Program Costume Coordinator for School of English and Theatre Studies at the University of Guelph.
Guided by attunement and awe for the beauty of the human condition, Mark LeRoy, in artistic and collectivistic collaboration, attempts to allow space and time for the unimagined, unthought, and unspoken in the hope that we may become witnesses to stories no longer lost in time or veiled by shame but voiced by aesthetic compassion and grace.
As a PhD student exploring how Bildungsroman memoirs—coming-of-age stories of initiated personhood—may help free the grasp of intergenerational trauma, Mark’s yearning for our culture is that we may find the courage to lay down our certainty for wonder as we are reformed into ourselves by that of which we have been entrusted and freed to give of ourselves for a time we will not live to see.
Georgia Simms is a performing artist, educator and facilitator. Her dance performance career spanning 25 years, both as an apprentice and company member with Dancetheatre David Earle and as a freelance artist, has taken her to stages in different parts of Canada, France and South Korea.
Since 2005, she has hosted technique classes for adults that honour the lineage of modern dance offered to her by David Earle (co-founder of Toronto Dance Theatre in 1968), with strong ties to the work of Martha Graham, José Limón and other leaders of American Modern Dance (1930-1960).
Sensing the edges of a ritualized technical practice, both for herself and her community of students, she began an investigation of improvisation in 2006 as part of a Guelph-based collective, Fall on your Feet, with Janet Johnson, Catrina von Radecki, Lynette Segal, Tanya Williams and Kelly Steadman. Finding ongoing astonishment and discovery in this realm, she established a class in dancetheatre improvisation in 2014 with musician Adam Bowman which continues to grow. The group explores an ever-evolving syllabus of tasks and parameters that provoke a generous investigation of the responsibilities and consequences of individual and collective choice-making.
She remains grateful for the opportunity to have been an artist-in-residence with Guelph Dance in 2020-2021 and for ongoing involvement as a guest choreographer and teacher with the Guelph Youth Dance Training Program.
Alongside her dance career have been academic pursuits including a Bachelor’s Degree in International Development and Environmental Studies, a Master’s Degree in Geography with an emphasis on environmental governance, and an integration of her worlds through arts-based community engagement through various projects. A long time member of the University of Guelph professional community, she has worked as a practitioner-in-residence with Community Engaged Scholarship Institute, a facilitator with ReVision: The Centre for Art and Social Justice, a workshop leader with the International Institute for Critical Studies in Improvisation, and a Sessional Instructor with the former First Year Seminar Program.
Georgia also weaves movement and improvisation into methodology, program design, evaluation and group facilitation as an invited consultant and workshop leader for regional arts organizations and universities, most recently with Art Not Shame, Guelph Youth Music Centre, Elora Centre for the Arts, and McMaster University.
She lives in Guelph, Ontario, with her husband, Adam, and their six-year old daughter.

[Postponed until Spring 2025] Thinking Spaces: Eric Fillion, Sean Mills, and Désirée Rochat, "Statesman of the Piano: A Conversation on the Politics of Archiving, Curating, and Music Making"
2024-12-05 19:00 - 20:30 (America/Toronto) | ImprovLab, MacKinnon Room 108, 87 Trent Lane, University of Guelph, Guelph, Ontario, N1G 1Y4, Canada
*Postponed until Spring 2025*
Please join us for Thinking Spaces: “Statesman of the Piano: A Conversation on the Politics of Archiving, Curating, and Music Making” with Eric Fillion, Sean Mills, and Désirée Rochat.

This presentation will take place in person at ImprovLab, MCKN 108 at the University of Guelph, as well as online via IICSI’s new Twitch Stream. As always, our Thinking Spaces events are free!
To attend the talk in-person or online, RSVP via our Google Forms.
More About the Roundtable Discussion
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.”
More About the Presenters
Eric Fillion is director of the International Institute for Critical Studies in Improvisation (IICSI) and assistant professor at the School of Languages and Literatures (SOLAL) at the University of Guelph. His research explores the social and symbolic importance of music, within countercultures and in Canadian international relations. His ongoing work on cultural diplomacy and Canadian-Brazilian relations builds on the experience he has acquired as a musician. It also informs his current research on the postwar Canadian cultural public sphere: his two main projects examine the emergence of the music festival phenomenon in Canada and the entangled sonic histories of diasporic social movements. An affiliate of the North American Cultural Diplomacy Initiative (NACDI), Eric Fillion is the founder of the Tenzier archival record label and co-editor of the journal Critical Studies in Improvisation. He is the author of JAZZ LIBRE et la révolution québécoise: musique-action, 1967-1975 and Distant Stage: Quebec, Brazil, and the Making of Canada’s Cultural Diplomacy. His latest book, Statesman of the Piano: Jazz, Race, and History in the Life of Lou Hooper (co-edited with Sean Mills and Désirée Rochat), is now available through McGill-Queen’s University Press
Sean Mills is professor and Canada Research Chair in Canadian and Transnational History at the University of Toronto. He is the author of The Empire Within: Postcolonial Thought and Political Activism in Sixties Montreal, and A Place in the Sun: Haiti, Haitians, and the Remaking of Quebec. Most recently, Mills is the co-editor (with Eric Fillion and Désirée Rochat) of Statesman of the Piano: Jazz, Race, and History in the Life of Lou Hooper (2023). Mills is a Member of the College of New Scholars, Artists, and Scientists of the Royal Society of Canada and a 2024 Fellow of the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation.

Désirée Rochat is a community educator and transdisciplinary scholar with a PhD in Educational Studies from McGill University. Guided by an integrative approach connecting historical research, community archival preservation and education, her work aims to document, theorize and transmit (hi)stories of Black communities’ activism. Rochat is a FRQSC Post-doctoral fellow at the Centre for Oral History and Digital Storytelling at Concordia University.

Audiopollination Guelph—Season 3, Episode 2
2024-12-18 20:00 - 22:00 (America/Toronto) | Silence, 46 Essex Street, Guelph, Ontario, N1H 3K8, Canada
Audiopollination Guelph returns for our second episode of Season 3, featuring new lineups of musicians and performers performing improvised music never before heard! It’s most likely going to be a chilly evening, but I hope you can make it for the final night of improvisation and community in 2024! (more to come next year)
The 2025 shows still have open slots, but they’re filling up quick! Sign up here!
Audiopollination Guelph is devoted to being identity-affirming space for all people, please come as you are and/or as you desire to be!
Wednesday, December 18th, 2024
Cost: $20/PWYC
Silence (46 Essex Street, Guelph, ON)
Doors Open at 7:30pm | Music Starts at 8pm
Ensemble 1: Nico, Connor Kurtz & Claire
Ensemble 2: Thomas Rolf, Tyson & Monte Fenske
Ensemble 3: Jamie Eriksen, David Sait & Tess Martens
Ensemble 4: Wettendrop
Please do your part to keep Audiopollination Guelph scent-free.
We are so thankful for support to the show from the Guelph Arts Council!
It’s flu season, so masks are encouraged and will be provided at the door.
Note: While the suggested payment is now $20, the show is still fully PWYC and NOTAFLOF.

Thinking Spaces: Justine Woods, “Re-stitching as Methodology: Garment-making as a Transformative Practice in Research-creation”
2025-01-21 12:00 - 13:30 (America/Toronto) | ImprovLab, MacKinnon Room 108, 87 Trent Lane, University of Guelph, Guelph, Ontario, N1G 1Y4, Canada
Please join us on Tuesday, January 21 at 12:00 PM (ET) for Thinking Spaces: “Re-stitching as Methodology: Garment-making as a Transformative Practice in Research-creation” with Justine Woods.

This presentation will take place in person at ImprovLab, MCKN 108 at the University of Guelph. As always, our Thinking Spaces events are free!
To attend the talk, RSVP via our Google Forms.
More About this Workshop:
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.
To support the workshop component of the talk, attendees are encouraged to bring an article of clothing that they do not mind making permanent changes and or adjustments to.
More About the Presenter:
Justine Woods is a garment-artist, creative scholar, educator, and curator. Stretching across fields of study, including but not limited to, fashion studies, performance and embodiment, and research-creation, Justine’s work passionately situates fashion as a pluriversal phenomenon. Her research centres garment-making as a practice-based method of inquiry toward re-stitching alternative worlds that prioritize Indigenous resurgence and liberation. To learn more about Justine, please visit her website: www.justinewoods.com
To attend the talk, RSVP via our Google Forms.

Wet Sounds Series Presents: Pantayo
2025-01-25 19:00 - 21:30 (America/Toronto) | ImprovLab, MacKinnon Room 108, 87 Trent Lane, University of Guelph, Guelph, Ontario, N1G 1Y4, Canada
Please join us Saturday, January 25 at 7:00 PM (ET) for Wet Sounds 2: Pantayo, presented by our friends at Musagetes.

This presentation will take place in person at ImprovLab, MCKN 108 at the University of Guelph.

Suggested PWYC tickets of $15 will be donated to Filipinos United for Palestine. No one turned away for lack of funds (NOTAFLOF).
Purchase your tickets here!
More About the Event
6:30 doors open
7:00 Talk
8:00 refreshments + cash bar
8:30 performance
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.
More About the Series
Wet Sounds is a quarterly arts series that presents conversations and performances centring the intersections of feminist and queer musicians’ academic work, artistic practice, and collaborations in the polycrisis. This series will examine notions of grief, ritual, queerness, pleasure, land, embodiment, colonialisms, decay, noise, and sound. Wet Sounds will ask how artists see their practice as impacted by or responding to the interconnected crises unfolding around us—climate chaos, genocide, fascism, an erosion of democracy, and multiple sites of oppression and resistance.

Book Launch—Soundin’ Canaan: Black Canadian Poetry, Music, and Citizenship, by Paul db Watkins
2025-02-06 19:00 - 20:30 (America/Vancouver) | 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 7:00 PM (PST).

The event will take place in person at The Vault Café, (499 Wallace Street, Nanaimo, BC). The book launch is by donation (5$ suggested).

Learn more about the book and pre-order by following this link!

More About the Event:
This initial book launch will feature poet and musician Sonnet L’Abbé (Sonnet’s Shakespeare) and Nanaimo Poet Laureate Neil Surkan (Unbecoming). The author will also be performing remixed versions of sections from the book.
Doors open at 6:30 p.m., and the readings will run from 7:00 to 8:00 p.m.
More About the Book:
Part exploration of a key group of Black Canadian poets, part literary, cultural, and musical history, Soundin’ Canaan demonstrates how music in Black Canadian poetry is not solely aesthetic, but a form of social, ethical, and political expression.
Soundin’ Canaan refers to the code name often used for Canada during the Black migration to Canada. The book analyzes the contributions of key Black Canadian poets, including their poetic styles and their performances. The book has several key objectives, including recuperating the collision of the historical and the Biblically derived figure of Canaan, the promised land of freedom and security for an African American population seeking to leave the shackles of slavery behind and the northern terminus of the underground railroad. Centering around the poetry of George Elliott Clarke, Dionne Brand, M. NourbeSe Philip, Wayde Compton, and rapper K’naan, it delves into how these poets draw inspiration from African American and Afro-diasporic musical genres, such as blues, jazz, reggae and dub, hip-hop, and remix, to reshape the notions of identity and citizenship. Soundin’ Canaan asks: what does Canadian citizenship sound like, especially when voiced by Black Canadian poets who embrace a fluid and multicultural form of citizenship that moves between local and global spaces, much like music does?
More About the Presenter:
Paul db Watkins is a Professor of English at Vancouver Island University. He is also a research team member with the International Institute for Critical Studies in Improvisation (IICSI). He has published widely on multiculturalism, hip-hop, Canadian poetry, jazz, DJ culture, and improvisation. Under his DJ alias, DJ Techné, he has completed several DJ projects that explore the spaces between poetry, hip-hop, and jazz.

Sam Newsome—The Popeye Effect: Unlocking the Artist's Power to Transcend (talk + solo concert)
2025-02-09 13:00 - 15:00 (America/Toronto) | Silence, 46 Essex Street, Guelph, Ontario, N1H 3K8, Canada
Please join us on Sunday, February 9 at 1:00 PM (ET) for “The Popeye Effect: Unlocking the Artist’s Power to Transcend (talk + solo concert)” with Sam Newsome.

This presentation will take place in person at Silence, 46 Essex Street in Guelph. Tickets are $20/PWYC (available at the door).

About the Event
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.
About the Artist
Sam Newsome stands as a multifaceted figure in the world of jazz—a saxophonist, music professor, and accomplished writer. In 2023, his artistic endeavors manifested in two duo recordings: Soprano-Logues, a collaborative effort with saxophonist Dave Liebman, and Cosmic Unconsciousness Unplugged, where he joined forces with pianist Jean-Michel Pilc. These releases showcased Newsome’s ability to engage in sonically-rich musical dialogues across different instrumental landscapes. His contributions to the music world have not gone unnoticed. In 2022, Newsome received the prestigious Bronx BRIO Award for Instrumental Music and secured the title of Soprano Saxophonist of the Year in the 14th Annual International Critics Polls. His accolades extend to the 2020 Instant Award in Improvised Music, the 2018 Alpert/Ragdale Prize in Music Composition, the 2016 NYFA Fellowship for Music Composition, and he’s been a consistent nominee for Soprano Saxophonist of the Year by the Jazz Journalist Association over the past five years. Beyond his musical accomplishments, Newsome is a prolific author, having penned two books of personal essays: “Be Inspired, Stay Focused” (2022) and “Life Lessons from the Horn” (2015). In 2023, his piece, “From NoHa to SoBro” was featured in the Bronx Memoir Project Anthology, VII. Newsome’s avant-garde approach, particularly in the realm of prepared saxophone, has positioned him as a sought-after player in New York’s improvised music scene. His innovative voice has resonated in collaborations with notable artists such as Elliot Sharpe, William Parker, Fay Victor, Daniel Carter, Joe Morris, and Dave Liebman. Through his diverse talents and contributions, Sam Newsome continues to shape and enrich the landscape of contemporary jazz.
