Research Library

The culture and technology of Electronic Music has seen tremendous developments over the last decade. Thanks to the increased availability, affordability and accessibility of equipment, the artform’s popularity has exploded worldwide. One booming area is that of “Sequencer-based Improvisation”, which entails the synchronizing of one or more instruments together via a “Master Clock”, then using sequencers, sound design, audio mixers, and effects, to spontaneously compose fluid and spontaneous music in real-time.

Dr. Rashida K. Braggs screens and discusses “Amber in the City of Light,” a solo multimedia performance that shares and re-envisions the experiences of Black African diasporic women jazz artists who have migrated to Paris, France. Culling original interviews, field notes and archival research, Dr. Rashida K. Braggs enacts multiple narratives through an embodied performance that merges original song, dance, poetry and theatre.

DJ Zahra Habib takes you on the cosmic experience that is Lunar Rotations, blending musical selections with narrative overtones that connect the sounds with the theme of arriving at an eternally internal freedom: Eleutheria.

The stated purpose of the International Institute for Critical Studies in Improvisation is “…to create positive social change through the confluence of improvisational arts, innovative scholarship, and collaborative action.” The purpose of this talk is to invite partnership and mutual sharing in Critical Studies in Improvisation to imagine uses and expansion in plantation societies.  Using art to confront complicated social issues is a long accepted and well received practice in plantation societies. Drumming, calypso, reggae music and parodies have been used by populations where other forms of expression such as newspapers and even social media are heavily policed to control dissent or calls for justice. 

Improvisation is a core element of some interventions in the emerging fields of dance for health and dance therapy, which have shown potential to slow progress or diminish symptoms of neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinson’s and Alheimer’s. IMPROVment® is a dance-based improvisational movement practice for brain-body health developed at Wake Forest University. It has been used in several research studies, including a recently completed RCT (2017 – 2020) and a just-launched 5-year RCT investigating dose and frequency effects of dance interventions for adults with subjective memory loss. This talk explores how tools related to improvisation can be adapted to a research-ready scientific protocol while preserving their integrity and magic – includes a demonstration.

The 2024 IICSI Research Studio Session took place on Friday, April 12, at ImprovLab. The session began with a keynote presentation by Dr. Rashida Braggs, “Amber in the City of Light,” and continued with a full day of research programming.

Inspired, in part, by the “Three-Minute Thesis” competition for grad students, we hope that participants will respond to the challenge to present their work and its wider impact and implications in plain language in five minutes or less.

This soundpiece features the voices and sounds of Campus Friends students who participated in the inaugural Sounds Like Us workshops held at the Improv Lab from February-April 2024.

Contact and Flow Festival March 3rd-17th, 2024 – Bacalar, México By: Lucas Carravetta Just four hours beneath Cancún’s wild party scene, along the calm shores of a freshwater lagoon, international…

On Saturday, October 21st, 2023, IICSI and Musagetes presented the Big Ideas in Improvisation lecture, “Vijay Iyer and Hafez Modirzadeh: in Conversation” as a part of IICSI’s fourth annual Improvisation Festival: IF 2023. The event was recorded in its entirety, and is now available to watch below.

IICSI’s research outcomes during the SSHRC PG (2012–2022) – including innovations in adaptive technologies, web platforms and apps for musical improvisation, critical theory, manuals and toolkits for practitioners in social services, rehabilitation therapy, music instruction and community arts – have been broadly shared via our peer-reviewed journal…