Sound It Out

In the middle of February, Toronto-based artist collective Public Recordings staged a performance of Pauline Oliveros‘ score To Valerie Solanas and Marilyn Monroe in Recognition of their Desperation at Toronto’s City Hall, in the Council Chambers. The performance concluded a week of public rehearsals in various locations around the city. Join us in this episode as … Continue reading Episode #83 – The Aesthetics of Transparency: Improvising in Toronto’s City Council Chambers →

What is the relationship between forms of social life and forms of art? In Social Aesthetics, Professor Georgina Born of Oxford University offers an analysis of the social in music and art using what she calls ‘planes of analysis.’ This is an empirical, ethnographic method of gathering data through observation, a way of finding out, rather than … Continue reading Episode #82: Epistemology Series – The Four Planes of Social Analysis with Georgina Born →

We often focus on the what of improvisation without questioning the who (or whom) of the practice. If we think of improvisation as judicious real-time responsiveness to a situation, we might wonder whether the image of the human implicit in that picture needs revision. In this episode, hear Dr. Edgar Landgraf discuss why we should shake off our … Continue reading Episode #81: Improvisation as Self-Reflexive Autopoesis – Edgar Landgraf on Posthumanism →

Its the CFRU Raise Your Voice Funding Drive! Donate!!! You will receive merch and a chance to win fabulous prizes if you give $25 or more. While donating you will be listening to Mano-Dharma by Takehisa Kosugi’s Catch Wave and also Louise Landes Levi with Paul Labrecque and Bart De Paepe playing Colloidal Love. Sound … Continue reading Episode #80: Takehisa Kosugi and Louise Landes Levi →

Is the voice like an instrument or is it the other way around? Can the voice communicate as pure sound or is it always entangled with language? How does the gendering of voice shape conventions of performance and composition in Gospel music? Chamber music? Vedic chant? Think through this stuff with #BlackComposer Darius Jones, vocal … Continue reading Episode #79 – “The Voice is Supreme” →

Canadian jazz experimentalist François Houle attempts to mount Cornelius Cardew’s 193-page series of symbols and images using solo clarinet, myriad electronics, and a series of loopers. In this world premier recorded at the IICSI House in September 2018, Houle presents an improvised dreamscape of sounds – nightmarish at times – reflecting his live-time compositional decision-making … Continue reading Episode #78 – The Mount Everest of Graphic Scores: François Houle on Solo Clarinet →

‘In music, silence is more important than sound,’ says Miles Davis. In April 2018, a multi-disciplinary gathering of musicians, dancers, philosophers, and designers convened in Italy’s Po River Delta to listen to the river in preparation for a performance at the UNESCO International Jazz Day in Padova. Join us in this reflection on silence and its surprises. Sound It … Continue reading Episode #77 – The Paradox of Silence on the Po River Delta →

This short episode of Sound It Out puts improvisation in Flamenco music into the spotlight through a discussion with Fin de Fiesta dancer Lia Grainger. Sound It Out airs on CFRU in Guelph on Tuesdays at 5pm. New episodes usually appear on a fortnightly basis. Sound It Out is produced and hosted by Rachel Elliott in conjunction with the International Institute for Critical … Continue reading Episode #76 – Fin de Fiesta Flamenco →

Improvisation can become invisible since it is such a big part of everyday life. In this episode, graduate student Dan DiPiero presents the thesis that social and musical improvisation share a common structure, which is an engagement with contingency. Sound It Out airs on CFRU in Guelph on Tuesdays at 5pm. New episodes usually appear on a fortnightly … Continue reading Episode #75 – Epistemology Series – Contingency and Everyday Improvisation →

  We know that the personal is political, but do we consider the extent to which the political is also personal? In this rich and lively archived conversation between Paul Watkins and queer Black Canadian dub poet d’bi.young anitafrika (August 2013), hear an animated testament to the necessity for multi-directional critique – looking at the … Continue reading Episode #74 – d’bi.young anitafrika “We Tellin’ Stories Yo” (archive conversation) →

In celebration of International Women’s Day, this episode of Sound It Out features songs by women from around the world who make music of an experimental sort. While most of the tracks you will hear are soothing and listenable, there are also a few selections that provide an ‘ear cleaning’ treatment, to use R. Murray … Continue reading Episode #73 – Mostly Music: Experimental Women →

“How does the “idea of north” trope relate to Canadian experimental music today?” In this fascinating talk, Professor Ellen Waterman describes, analyzes, and questions “the symbiotic relationship between public funding and artistic programming and content.” Waterman’s engaging and authoritative style is an enormously welcome way of digesting a wealth of historical and contemporary references, audio samples, … Continue reading Episode #72 – The Idea of North and Experimental Music in Canada: Ellen Waterman @ MMap →

In this mostly music version of Sound It Out, you will stroll with me through time and space, including outer space, and meet some of the most groundbreaking musicians of the 20th Century and beyond. From Eleanor Collins, whose eponymous TV series on CBC predated Nat King Cole by a year to make her the first black … Continue reading Episode #71 – Mostly Music: A Survey of Black Women in Canadian Music →

How can we know the improvisatory if it only happens one time? In this episode we consider the possibility of knowing a temporal process from the inside, while it is happening. Is it possible to be in the middle of an event unfolding in time and still perform ‘analytical acts’? Or do we need to … Continue reading Episode #70 – Epistemology Series: Real-Time Analysis →

How do we know improvisation? Do we need to define it before we can research it? Or are the characteristics, causes, and effects of improvisation only knowable through that research itself? This episode is the first in a series on epistemological issues surrounding improvisation studies. Definitions of improvisation are presented, and debate over the merits … Continue reading Episode #69 – Epistemology Series: What is Improvisation? →

Peter Brötzmann is a German Free Jazz saxophonist who has been a key figure in the development of the Free Jazz movement. Hear him in a conversation with animated Newfoundland personality Mack Furlong, recorded live at the Guelph Jazz Festival in September 2017. You will finish this episode with a renewed vision of improvisation’s social … Continue reading Episode # 68 – Peter Brötzmann talks with Mack Furlong →

‘History is written by the victor, but in this case history is written by the doctor.’ For the album Audible Songs from Rockwood, the songwriter and performer Simone Schmidt  dug into the archival records of the Rockwood Asylum for the Criminally Insane, operative between 1856 and 1881. What Schmidt came out with are eleven compelling audible … Continue reading Episode # 67 – Historicizing Criminal Insanity: Simone Schmidt →

German-born Newfoundlander Florian Hoefner plays the piano like a puffin diving into the Atlantic. Or at least he can. He can also tell a wordless tale about the extinct Great Auk, a drifting iceberg, or even the motion of the surging ocean itself. On this episode, hear Florian Hoefner talk about his experience composing a series … Continue reading Episode #66 – Puffins and Piano: Florian Hoefner’s Kinaesthetic Storytelling →

The Guelph Jazz Festival and Colloquium gets underway on Wednesday September 13! Listen to this episode of Sound It Out to hear music from some of the intriguing performers scheduled to descend onto Guelph this week. Hear the sounds of Bernice, Bass Drum Bone, Animatist, Matthew Shipp, Barnyard Drama, Pierre Kwenders, and Eucalyptus, as well … Continue reading Episode #65 – Jazz Fest Fever →

The paradox in human relationship to wilderness is that despite being understood as a region untouched by human activity, we seek to experience this wilderness at close range. Our quests for wilderness always begin with a human idea about what wilderness is – in cultural signifiers of wilderness. One of the most prominent of these … Continue reading Episode #64 – Howling with the Wolves: The Culture of Nature →

Many of us have attempted to maintain relationships with loved ones across distance using technologies such as the telephone or video chat; we are able to experience a sense of their presence even though they may be thousands of kilometres away. Jason Robinson and others, such as Doug Van Nort and Sara Weaver, make use … Continue reading Episode #63: Telematics →

Sara Villa gives a moving and insightful account of her use of deep listening as a pedagogy of poetry for college students, Susan Elliott explains improvisation as a facet of the inquiry approach to high school teaching, and Stephanie Khoury revitalizes music education at the university level with her approachable and engaging interactive improvisation software. … Continue reading Episode #62 – Pedagogy and Improvisation: Sara Villa, Susan Elliott, Stephanie Khoury →

Take in hand this bouquet of strings and let yourself be lead by this cluster of sonic helium balloons. But don’t let your feet leave the ground; today’s exquisitely lengthy musical meandering are interspersed with thought provoking reflections about the the pace of perception and sense-making by Richelle Forsey and Rachel Elliott. Listen and be … Continue reading Episode #61 – Slowingdown Perception with Richelle Forsey and Rachel Elliott →

Why do so many young people uproot themselves and move to the city, searching for culture? What is it that they are looking for? How does their search shape what they find? These are some of the questions that frame this discussion with improviser and scholar, David Lee. David Lee was part of a community of … Continue reading Episode #60: David Lee – Improvisation in Toronto 1960 – 1985 →

Have you every had someone over to your house, as a guest? Did you spend much time thinking about the ethics of the situation? Of hospitality? In his later work, founding deconstructionist Jacques Derrida turned toward the concept of hospitality as a way to face questions about our ability to engage ethically with alterity, or otherness. … Continue reading Episode #59: Improvising Hospitality with Francesco Paradiso →

Dans ce documentaire 2010, écoutez Meghan Dzyak et Hélène Laurin interviewer les participants du mouvement musique actuelle à Montréal, Québec. Découvrez le développement d’Ambiances Megnetiques à travers ses origines dans L’ensemble de Musique improvisée de Montréal et L’association pour la diffusion de la musique ouverte. Ces entretiens avec Jean Derome, Joane Hétu, Danielle Palardy Roger … Continue reading Episode #58: Musique Actuelle (matériel archivé) →

The philosopher Alfred Schütz points to a ‘mutual tuning-in relationship’ at the foundation of all possible communication. In this episode of Sound It Out we ask you to consider this theme in an audio journey through the Somewhere There creative music festival in Toronto. Explore how relationships of collaborative co-creation occur not only between performers on … Continue reading Episode #57 -Being There for the Duration: Sarah Kitz, David Dacks, and Nick Fraser →

You might think that music on a vinyl record is pretty much ‘set in stone,’ that at last we have hit upon a form of music to which improvisation is simply irrelevant. Well it turns out not. Kid Koala is a limitlessly creative scratch DJ from Montréal QC, currently touring his new album Music to … Continue reading Episode #56: Kid Koala, Master of Scratch (and stories!), in conversation with Mark V Campbell →

Lyricists and vocalists and often considered to be the ‘real artists’ in contrast with the activities of the producers they work with. In an article published in the journal Critical Studies in Improvisation / Études critiques en improvisation, Leila Adu-Gilmore challenges this conception of the producer, arguing that their process amounts to music creation in the … Continue reading Episode #55: Ghanaian Producers as Improvising Composers: Appietus & DJ Breezy →

Pauline Oliveros was a paragon of improvisation on many levels, embodying the virtues of reciprocity, openness, justice, and perhaps most of all, listening. Hear music and commentary about sonic meditation, deep listening, lesbian musicality, and Adaptive Use Musical Instruments as we commemorate the passing of this foundational figure in experimental music and affiliate if the … Continue reading Episode #54- Pauline Oliveros (1932 – 2016) →

There are stories, songs, even full movies, woven into the places where we live our lives. Jenny Mitchell and Iris Fraser-Gudrunas were coming-of-age sidekicks entering Toronto’s DIY art scene in the mid-2000s. Themselves gifted and perspicacious creators of music and multi-disciplinary art, their respective trajectories found them seeking out the stories and symbolism in the surrounding rural environments. Hear how Iris Fraser-Gudrunas … Continue reading Episode #53 – Jenny Mitchell and Iris Fraser: Brother Frank on a Golden Bus →

Anthems are a means by which group identity is formed, and without group identity, argues to Professor Tracey Nicholls, the courage and imagination that justice work requires is in short supply. Today we discuss some of the anthems of the Black Lives Matter movement, such as Black Rage by Lauren Hill and Hell You Talmbout … Continue reading Episode #52 – Tracey Nicholls Improvising Rage →

Creative collaboration takes the reigns out of our hands. It demands we let go of control, leave aside our training, skill, mastery, and follow the free play of our embodied imagination. Sink into a hot bath and let the voices of Ellen Waterman and Alessandro Bertinetto warm up those rattly November bones. Waterman talks about her fluting explorations with pianist … Continue reading Episode #51: Free Play of the Body – Beautiful Communication with Ellen Waterman and Alessandro Bertinetto →

Four improvising composers, five great lakes: go. Phil Albert (Bass) and Patrick O’Reilly (Guitar) of Ontario meet with Patrick Booth (Saxophone) and Jon Taylor (Percussion) of Michigan for an intensive, week-long string of performances that embrace improvisation as much as composition. Hear the band discuss composition as a long-form improvisation (and the inverse!), staring down … Continue reading Episode #50 – Great Lakes as Productive Constraint: Composing Improvisation with Sonic Perfume →

Do you remember those hot humid days of summer that threatened to explode into thunderous storms and torrential rain? Listening to this week’s episode of Sound It Out will bring you back into those days, with field recordings, performances, and impromptu conversations taking place at the Electric Eclectics festival in Meaford, Ontario at the end … Continue reading Episode #49 – The Sublime Sounds of Summer at Electric Eclectics 2016 →

Spend the next hour bathing in the peaceful guitar sounds of improvising guitarist and musical community builder Ken Aldcroft. Co-founder of the Association of Improvising Musicians Toronto, the Leftover Daylight Series, the NOW Series, and serving on the board of the Somewhere There musicians’ collective, Ken Aldcroft’s sudden passing on September 17th, 2016 put Canada’s … Continue reading Episode #48 – Honouring Ken Aldcroft →

In the late 1990s and early 2000s, the was a lawless environment on the other side of the Williamsburg Bridge that connects the New York boroughs of Brooklyn and Manhattan. Gentrification and the aftermath of 9/11 made the Lower East Side undesirable for burgeoning young musicians, and Williamsburg with its industrial collapse and empty buildings … Continue reading Episode #47 – Williamsburg, Brooklyn: A History of Experimental Music Spaces (90s-00s) with Cisco Bradley →

Is improvisation a vital constituent of the everyday practices underlying vibrant and healthy psychic life? Marcel Swiboda discusses this idea with me in a detailed look at Of the Refrain by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari. We consider historical and technological forces that constrain our ability to improvise daily, and whether professional improvising musicians, such as Ornette Coleman, provide the antidote … Continue reading Episode #46 – Hazarding Improvisation in Everyday Comportment with Marcel Swiboda →

The list of jazz innovators who described Buddhism as central to their music and personal purpose is long – Ernestine Anderson, Herbie Hancock, Buster Williams, Richard Davis, Hamid Drake, and Terri Lyne Carrington are just a few. In this episode, Prof. Tracy McMullen discusses the implications of jazz buddhism on how we think about Black Critical Praxis, which, she contends, … Continue reading Episode #45 – Jazz Buddhists and Improvisatist Giving with Tracy McMullen →

The Guelph Jazz Festival has been taking place annually since 1994, attracting world-class performers and audiences to dear friendly Guelph, refreshing our spirits for the back-to-school season. This week’s episode of Sound It Out showcases a selection of music from performers that will be on stage at this year’s event. See the full festival schedule here: http://www.guelphjazzfestival.com/2016 … Continue reading Episode #44 – Jazz is more than Jazz: A Guided Musical Preview of the Guelph Jazz Festival 2016 →

Imagine wandering around an arboretum and running into pods of musicians, dancers, puppets, and percussive farming equipment amid hundreds of other wandering folk. This is what took place on May 18th, 2016 in the Guelph Arboretum, the culminating event of Douglas R. Ewart’s term as Improviser-in-Residence. Crepuscule brings together diverse communities in a playful, multidimensional … Continue reading Episode #43 – Crepuscule in the Arboretum with Douglas R. Ewart →

When you look at the mess of equipment in front of electronic musical experimenter Lisa Gamble, your head can start to swim. The mystery of musicianship is always apparent when you observe an instrument not being played. By what sorcery will they coax this object into music? We wonder this about even the most straightforward instruments. The magic in the encounter … Continue reading Episode #42 – Improvising Electronics with Gambletron →

The International Institute for Critical Studies in Improvisation has a number of graduate student researchers working with them at the University of Guelph. In this episode you will meet them! There are seven 3-minute speeches by IICSI researchers detailing their interest in improvisation and how they do their research contained in today’s program. One of these … Continue reading Episode #41 – IICSI Research Studio Session →

What comes to mind when you think about East Germany during the Cold War? Transnational black experimentalism? On today’s episode of Sound It Out historical musicologist Harald Kisiedu traces the development of experimental jazz through the innovative musical dynamo Ernst-Ludwig Petrowsky. Kisiedu shows how the institutional discourses of the time pinpoint aesthetics as a critical … Continue reading Episode #40 The Origins of Jazz Experimentalism in East Germany – Harald Kisiedu talks about Ernst-Ludwig Petrowsky →

One way of understanding the social importance of improvisation is its accessibility – anyone can improvise with anything, so long as the musical relationships involved respect the rules of improvisatory engagement – good listening, judicious risk taking, responsibility for others etc. The tight and tired world of elitist musical aims is no longer palatable to many of us, and improvisation, … Continue reading Episode #39 – Adaptave Use Technology (archive conversation) →

This conversation with philosopher Eric Lewis of McGill University centres around the question ‘what is music’, or more specifically, ‘what is improvised music?’ Prof. Lewis explains why a consideration of improvised music can re-frame some of the questions traditionally associated with the philosophical study of music, such as how a musical work is related ontologically … Continue reading Episode #38 – Music Ontology with Eric Lewis →

“Sound work as soul work.” This is how Gary Diggins describes what he does in his chamber of wonders located in the back of Guelph’s ‘venue for adventurous sounds’, Silence. A life-long musician and masterful musical healer, Diggins has worked with individuals and groups around the world using sound to elevate consciousness, promote healing, remind us … Continue reading Episode #37 – Silence and Mindfulness with Gary Diggins →

Can you make a libretto out of an academic book? This is the question George E. Lewis asked and answered during his visit to the University of Guelph on March 4th, 2016. Drawing from the audio recordings of early AACM organizational meetings where members discussed their motivations for forming the Association, Lewis responds in the affirmative, transforming a … Continue reading Episode #36: AACM Origins and Apocrypha – George E. Lewis’s Opera ‘Afterword’ →

If improvising is sometimes understood as a form of dialogue, what are we to say about solo improvising? Perhaps it should be understood as a dialogue with oneself, or between performer and audience, or performer and their own instrument, or even the performer’s own sonic memories, of trucks, birds, voices. Maybe it has another sort … Continue reading Episode #35: Solo Improvisation at Somewhere There Festival →

The weather affects us. This is never more obvious than in the middle of winter! But what would happen if we began to respond to atmospheric influences artistically, rather than just practically? If instead of cinching up our scarves we responded to the falling snow with a little improvised saxophone? And then paired that musical response with dance … Continue reading Episode #34: Adam Kinner – Atmosphere and the Transmutable Archive →