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IICSI members explain how their work is related to improvisation, why they are so passionate about their research, and why they think improvised art is important to society and the humanities.

A Plenary Panel: Arts-Based Community Making, moderated by Elizabeth Jackson, IICSI’s Community Engagement Officer at the 2015 Guelph Jazz Festival Colloquium: Among the People: Arts, Improvisation, and Well-Being. Speaking on the…

Composer, band leader, saxophonist, sound experimentalist and mixed-media practitioner Matana Roberts, talks the need for a language of fearlessness, the need artists have for each other and the improvisation involved in being an artist at Among the People Art, Improvisation & Well-Being at the 2015 Guelph Jazz Festival Colloquium.

The International Society for Improvised Music (ISIM) hosted the panel discussion, AACM: The Next Fifty Years with active AACM members Douglas R. Ewart, Ann E. Ward and Khari B. The panel was moderated by Brian Lefresne and the panel was concluded with an improvised performance.

The International Society for Improvised Music hosted a panel and performance featuring Douglas R. Ewart, Ann E. Ward and Khari B. The panel presentation was moderated by Brian Lefresne, a PhD candidate at the University of Guelph.

The 2015 Play Who You Are camp was hosted by Rainbow Programs for Children at the University of Guelph, and facilitated by pianist/improviser/student music therapist Laura Stinson.

Douglas R. Ewart was the 2015-2016 Improviser-In-Residence in Guelph and Waterloo. Ewart’s residency included instrument building workshops, musical improvisations with local artists, a performance at the 2015 Guelph Jazz Festival & Colloquium and culminated in his orchestrated, massive community improvisation Crepuscule 2016, in Guelph’s Arboretum. The Improviser-in-Residence program is a collaborative partnership between IICSI, the Laurier Centre for Music in the Community, and Musagetes.

Watch and listen to Georgia Simms discuss investigating dance improvisation for the Thinking Spaces Reading Group and Speaker Series.

Watch and listen to Mrdangam virtuoso Trichy Sankaran discuss the role of improvisation in his music during his workshop on South Asian musical traditions with Autorickshaw Trio.

Professor Trichy Sankaran is a world-renowned percussion virtuoso, Indian music scholar and composer, and the founding director of Indian music studies at York University. Over the years, Prof. Sankaran has bridged eastern and western pedagogical styles and has influenced generations of students who have become noted performers, composers, and music educators themselves.

During the 2014 Guelph Jazz Festival Colloquium John Szwed presented “Sun Ra on Earth” as a keynote address.