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…
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.”
*** Postponed ***
We will share details on a rescheduled date as soon as they become available.
Stones, the instruments featured on this album, are joined by sounds of bells, sticks and Young’s stringed instruments as Harley expands their resonance, shaping sounds through granulation, layering, transposition, delays, and spatialization.
Young’s collection of resonant stones from the shores of Newfoundland, resonant sticks from abandoned beaver lodges in Ontario, played with bells and assorted hardware, are combined with stringed instruments she designed and built.
As hex-bolts are rolled over stones resting on strings, their vibrations cause the strings to sound. Bells resonate with stones, stones rock on strings, and resonant sticks bounce on strings.
Signal processing simultaneously expands the depth and frequency range, adding complexity through layering and subtle shifts over time.
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.
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).
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.
—"An adept improviser can find ways forward amid impasse, agency amid oppression, and community amid division." – The Improviser's Classroom Join us on April 3, 2025 at ImprovLab for a full-day symposium investigating ways to re-imagine pedagogy through the prisms of activism, reciprocity, and communal care. This free, open-to-everyone event is focused around the launch…
International Institute for Critical Studies in Improvisation IICSI House,
9 University Avenue East,
Guelph, ON,
N1H 1M8
Tel: 519-824-4120 Ext. 53885 | [email protected]
Send mail to:
IICSI House
9 University Avenue East
Guelph, Ontario
N1H 1M8
improv@uoguelph.ca
