 IMprov Notes:
News of the Moment June 2014
Former ICASP Postdoc Mark Laver is now an Assistant Professor of Music at Grinnell College
Please join us in congratulating Mark Laver (ICASP Postdoctoral Fellow 2011-13) who has accepted a position as an Assistant Professor of Music (Jazz) at Grinnell College (Iowa, U.S.). His research explores intersections among jazz, improvisation, neoliberal capitalism, and consumption. His forthcoming book, Jazz Sells: Music and Marketing (Routledge) examines the use of jazz in advertising, marketing, and branding. Keep an eye/ear out for his book, and look for Mark at future IICSI events!
ORAL HISTORIES PROJECT
Oral Histories is a showcase of interviews, performances, and articles by and about improvising musicians, artists, writers and scholars. This monthly feature offers an intimate look inside the minds and practices of some of the many dynamic, innovative people whose energy and ideas make improvisation studies such a vibrant field of inquiry. The Oral Histories project provides a space for improvising artists to be heard in their own words, often in dialogue with other improvisers, scholars, and practitioners.
Linda Hutcheon:
"Points of Contact":
Co-Positioning Improvisation and Adaptation Theory and Practice
Dr. Linda Hutcheon, an Officer of the Order of Canada and University of Toronto Professor Emeritus, is a recognized scholar of adaptation theory as well as an ICASP Advisory Board member. In the following email interview with ICASP graduate student Stephanie Hill, Dr. Hutcheon talks about the relationship between improvisation and adaptation. Her seminal book, A Theory of Adaptation, is an extensive and multi-contextual survey of contemporary adaptation. In it, she challenges the fidelity model of adaptation and speaks to the driving forces behind the creation of adaptations.
Given Dr. Hutcheon’s participation in interdisciplinary and collaborative scholarship and her work in “what art teaches us about theory” (“Linda Hutcheon”), Stephanie Hill was eager to hear what Hutcheon might have to offer in terms of a comparison between improvisation and adaptation practices. Dr. Hutcheon’s support of ICASP in combination with her expertise in adaptation studies give her a unique positioning from which to consider the two fields together.
As Hutcheon puts it in the interview: "Well, not all adaptation is improvisation, as I understand it. First of all, improvisation is usually (always?) extemporaneous, isn’t it? And most adaptation is not. But improvisation very often involves adaptation. It might be a matter of degree, ranging from (in music) free jazz to jazz 'standards.' In other words, if a musical piece is an improvisation on a theme (melody) or the notes of a chord (harmony), or maybe even a song form or style, it would definitely be considered an adaptation of that element. In other words, adaptation is the word we tend to use to describe an overt and indeed defining relation to another prior text: it is an adaptation OF something."
To read the full transcript between Hill and Hutcheon on the relationship between the fields of improvisation and adaptation, click here.
Quote of the Month:
“Style has a profound meaning to Black Americans. If we can’t drive, we will invent walks and the world will envy the dexterity of our feet. If we can’t have ham, we will boil chitterlings; if we are given rotten peaches, we will make cobblers; if given scraps, we will make quilts; take away our drums, and we will clap our hands. We prove the human spirit will prevail. We will take what we have to make what we need. We need confidence in our knowledge of who we are.”
― Nikki Giovanni, Racism 101. 154-155
Photo by Brett Weinstein. Wikipedia Commons.
The above quote from Nikki Giovanni describes how African Americans have turned survival into an improvisational art form. Yolande Cornelia “Nikki” Giovanni is an African American poet, activist, children’s book writer, and educator teaching English at Virginia Tech. The Civil Rights and Black Power Movements inspired much of her early poetry. Her book Love Poems (1997) was written to commemorate rapper 2pac, and she has stated that she would “rather be with the thugs than the people who are complaining about them.”
Vol 9, No 2 (2013)
General Topics Issue
Check out the latest General Issue of Critical Studies in Improvisation / Études critiques en improvisation (Vol. 9, No.2).
The issue can be accessed online here.
Editorial
Improvisation's Ebb and Flow
Frederique Arroyas
"The idea that improvisation is created ex nihilo is one that practitioners and theorists continue to push against. Spontaneity relies on a discipline of readiness and an awareness of one’s environment. Hard work and commitment underlie the seemingly impulsive spontaneity of a performer’s gestures. Consider improvisation as ebb and flow between internalized skills and extemporaneous utterances, a continuous probing of acquired knowledge to pursue an adapted, and adaptable, form of expression. The articles in this issue of CSI-ECI investigate this alternate backward and forward movement on a number of planes—historical, cultural, and individual."
Continue reading.
Improvising Across Borders Colloquium to be held Saturday, June 21st and Sunday, June 22nd, Robson Square Room C 400, at UBC (Vancouver).
Coastal Jazz and the International Institute for Critical Studies in Improvisation (IICSI) will host a two-day colloquium on Saturday June 21 & Sunday June 22, 2014, focused on the theme of improvising across boundaries.
Presentations by members of the artistic and scholarly communities will focus around the ways in which improvisation – in music, in theatre, in dance and in text – can offer strategies and practices to help us to negotiate with boundaries and borders, with the challenges presented by the politics of gender, history and social class or by multiculturalism, by race and racism.
How can improvisation provide performers and audiences with the means to encounter and to come to terms with the ways in which we have undertaken, various practices of inclusion and of exclusion, of community-building and of confrontation? Can improvisation enable new modes of cultural and social understanding?
Admission is free. Full program available here.
ICSII team member Joel Bakan releases new album with Rebecca Jenkins
Rebecca Jenkins and Her Trio, Live at the Cellar was recorded in February 2014 at The Cellar in Vancouver. Bakan is the partner of Jenkins and the album features their son Myim on drums, and Bruce Meikle on bass. There is an album release party in Toronto at the Jazz Bistro, July 3 and 4, with Vancouver and other cities to follow (dates TBA).
Check the music out on iTunes, Amazon.com, and CD Baby.
Call for Think Pieces
How can theories of improvisation re-imagine and redefine the roles of intellectuals? How can a theory be activated by an improvising subject and directed into tangible and meaningful action? What are the horizons of improvisation studies and why do they matter in contexts of crisis?
The Think Pieces project will explore the boundaries and borders of critical improvisation research as it engages with the social, political, and cultural issues that affect the lived lives of individuals around the globe. By bringing together the divergent voices of engaged writers and thinkers to ponder how improvisation provides novel insight into a deluge of problems, the Think Pieces project will offer a provocation to its readers: as improvisers/through improvisation, how and why do we think; how and why do we act? We intend to collect the voices and writings of scholars, activists, policymakers, creative practitioners, artists, and philosophers to debate what role improvisation plays in any number of topics – and any number of responses. Each month, a new Think Piece will be uploaded to the online home of the ICASP project to be shared, discussed, and debated.
Call For Think Pieces
We invite submissions of Think Pieces that range from 750-1250 words (approx.) and explore improvisation as it applies to different sites of theory, engagement, and practice. The papers can be creative or theoretical in nature, but should explore some aspect of improvisation and its possibilities for critical analysis, social action, and/or social belonging. A general format for the title of each piece should be as follows: “Think Piece: Improvisation and ______”. Papers do not need to be fully developed or scholarly in nature, and may seek to pose questions for future research. Submissions and questions should be directed to Mark Kaethler at: mkaethle@uoguelph.ca.
Current Think Piece: Think Pieces 2: Pedestrian Sundays and community well-being in Kensington Market, Toronto - Sophie Maksimowski
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.
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