Improv Notes: January 2013
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 IMprov Notes: News of the Moment January 2013
Class Action: Human Rights, Critical Activism, and Community-Engaged Learning
We invite you to join Ajay Heble and us at McMaster University for this important lecture series and discussion taking place at McMaster University (Council Chambers. GH 111. 1:00 - 3:00 pm)
ORAL HISTORIES PROJECT Andrew Charles Cyrille, born in 1939 in Brooklyn, began playing drums in a drum and bugle corps at the age of 11. For a period in his teens Cyrille studied chemistry, while playing jazz in the evenings, eventually enrolling in the Juilliard School of Music. In the late '50s and early '60s he worked with such mainstream jazz musicians as Mary Lou Williams, Roland Hanna, Roland Kirk, Coleman Hawkins, and Junior Mance, and recorded with Hawkins, as well as tenor saxophonist Bill Barron, for the Savoy label. Cyrille succeeded Sunny Murray as Cecil Taylor's drummer in 1964, and stayed with the pianist until 1975, during which time he played on many of Taylor's classic albums. He played with a good many other top players during that time too, including Marion Brown, Grachan Moncur III and Jimmy Giuffre, and collaborated with Rashied Ali and Milford Graves on a series of mid-'70s concerts entitled "Dialogue of the Drums." Beginning in 1975 and lasting into the '80s, Cyrille led his own group, called Maono (“feelings”), with its fluid membership dictated by the forces of his compositions, and also played with a band that included the violinist Billy Bang, bassist Sirone, altoist Brown, and trumpeter Ahmed Abdullah. In 1983 he recorded the all-percussion album Pieces of Time for Soul Note with Graves, Don Moye, and Kenny Clarke. When not leading his own bands, he has worked ubiquitously as a sideman, and he is currently a faculty member at the New School for Social Research in New York City. His work has earned him a number of grants and awards. As part of the 2010 Guelph Jazz Festival Colloquium, Rob Wallace conducts an interview with the renowned drummer. They discuss the body in relation to spirituality, drumming, dance, pedagogy, improvisation, sociality, big bands, and other insights and reflections informed by Cyrille's own practice. Writer, musician, and teacher Rob Wallace holds a Ph.D. in English Literature from the University of California, Santa Barbara. His research focuses on poetry, improvisation, popular and “world” musics, and the intersections between literature and music. Wallace is an active percussionist in a number of genres ranging from Hindustani classical music to free improvisation, and he is the author of Improvisation and the Making of American Literary Modernism (Continuum). 
S O M E
W H E R E T H E R E  Festival of Creative Music: Feb 22-24, 2013 The Somewhere There Festival of Creative Music will take place February 22-24, 2013 at the TRANZAC Main Hall (292 Brunswick Ave) in Toronto. At 1pm on Saturday, February 23rd, Nick Loess and Joe Sorbara will present the film premiere of Start Making Noises Now, an initiative of the Improvisation, Community, and Social Practice (ICASP) Research Project.
Please check out the full calendar for more talks and performances! Quote of the Month: If it's totally improvised, then it's not my music anymore, is it? My solo music - I get up onstage, I improvise and it's my improvisation. When I get up onstage with Fred Frith and Mike Patton, then we're improvising together. Then it's not my music; it's our music. I don't like to ever say the word 'my music.' ... Nothing is mine. We're working on this together. -John Zorn, in an interview with The San Francisco Chronicle.  John Zorn (born September 2, 1953 in New York City) is an American avant-garde composer, arranger, record producer, saxophonist and multi-instrumentalist. Zorn is an incredibly prolific artist who has hundreds of album credits as a performer, composer, or producer. He has had experience with a variety of genres including jazz, rock, hardcore punk, classical, extreme metal, klezmer, film, cartoon, popular, and improvised music. Since 2000, Zorn has edited multiple editions of the book series, Arcana: Musicians on Music, which features interviews, essays, and commentaries by musicians mostly working in improvised and avant-garde mediums.About ICASP  The international Improvisation, Community, and Social Practice research project explores musical improvisation as a model for social change. The project plays a leading role in defining a new field of interdisciplinary research to shape political, cultural, and ethical dialogue and action. As a form of musical practice, improvisation embodies real-time creative decision-making, risk-taking, and collaboration. Improvisation must be considered not simply as a musical form, but as a complex social phenomenon that mediates transcultural inter-artistic exchanges that produce new conceptions of identity, community, history, and the body. This project focuses primarily on jazz and creative improvised music. The dominant theoretical issues emerging from this music have vital social implications. Check out our diverse research collection. |
This Month's Featured Artist:
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