News
Guelph Jazz Festival Continues to Inspire, Engage, and Incite Dialogue
Reviews for the 2014 Guelph Jazz Festival are coming in, and as usual, the Festival is celebrated for its daring and unique sounds, community engagement, and inclusivity. Ottawa Jazz…
Think Pieces “Tunes from Brainville: Improvised Jazz and/as Utopia”
In this piece, Greg Shupak examines the correlations between political visions of utopia and the space Daniel Fischlin and Ajay Heble refer to as the other side of nowhere, a…
ImprovNotes August 2014 Artist of the Month: Sun Ra Arkestra
Sun Ra, who thought of himself as much as a scientist as a musician, used space, music, and improvisation as ways to escape the material world and, to contemplate cosmic…
Summer Institute Fosters Improvisational Encounter and Social Virtuosity
The 2014 Summer Institute for Critical Studies in Improvisation was held June 29 to July 12 at Memorial University’s School of Music. The institute was integrated with The Sound Symposium, St.…
Oral Histories Project: Dong-Won Kim
Dong-Won Kim is a Korean percussionist, pedagogue, vocalist, composer, and improviser. Since 1984, he has studied various forms of traditional music, ranging from farmers’ drumming and dance, shaman music, and…
ImprovNotes July 2013 Artist of the Month: Randy Weston
Randy Weston’s playing has stylistic nods to Duke Ellington and Thelonious Monk (paying tribute to both on his portrait albums), and yet he is very much an innovator of the jazz…
Kickstarter: Pauline Oliveros Reverberations Box Set Re-press (by Important Records)
Pauline Oliveros’ groundbreaking “Reverberations: Tape + Electronic Music 1961-1980” box set is in need of a re-press. Pauline Oliveros’ Reverberations: Tape + Electronic Music 1961-1970 12CD box set has been…
ImprovNotes June 2014 Artist of the Month: Matthew Ship
Pianist Matthew Shipp is a contemporary iconoclast of the jazz tradition; his music embodies the jazz cadences of pianists like Monk and Evans, brilliantly filtered through his unique musical personality…
Call for Think Pieces
How can theories of improvisation re-imagine and redefine the roles of intellectuals? How can a theory be activated by an improvising subject and directed into tangible and meaningful action? What are the…
