IICSI Director Eric Fillion Launches New Book: SOUNDTRACK TO THE REVOLUTION

On June 24, 2025, Dr. Eric Fillion, Director of the University of Guelph’s International Institute for Critical Studies in Improvisation (IICSI), will hold a launch event for his new book, Soundtrack to the Revolution: Free Jazz and Leftist Nationalism in Quebec 1967-1975. The book was translated from the French by David Homel and published by Véhicule Press.

The launch event is free to attend, open to all, and will take place from 6:30-8:30 PM at The Bookshelf Cinema (41 Quebec Street, Guelph, Ontario). Dr. Fillion will discuss Soundtrack to the Revolution with Hamilton-based author David Lee. Their conversation will be followed by a screening of The Cat in the Bag (1964, in French with subtitles), a groundbreaking film in Quebec national cinema with an original score by John Coltrane.

Soundtrack to the Revolution tells the story of the group Jazz Libre du Québec, a radical experiment in musical activism that reveals the meaningful role that the art of spontaneity played in the turbulent 1960s and 1970s.

This scintillating book is generating glowing reviews. The Literary Review of Canada writes that it “moves along at a brisk pace as it details how a group of idealistic and inventive musicians threw off the ‘dictatorship of tempo and harmonic progression’ and, for a time, fought to ‘decolonize’ Quebec, ‘armed with a trumpet, not a machine gun.’”

A second launch event will follow on June 26, 2025, as part of Montreal’s Suoni per il Popolo festival.