International Institute for Critical Studies in Improvisation

Join us in ImprovLab (MacKinnon Room 108, University of Guelph) on September 10th and 11th for the 2026 Guelph Jazz Festival Colloquium!

Titled "Artists On/Off the Record: Living Archives and Embodied Memory," this year's colloquium explores archival heritage as a dynamic, open-ended process. Bringing together artists, scholars, and community practitioners, it considers how archives are constituted, activated, contested, and transformed by—and in the hands of—artists engaged in improvisatory worldmaking.

In what ways can/do artists engage with archival materials—those held in institutional and community archives as well as those typically referred to as ephemera—to interrogate the aesthetic and political dimensions of cultural memory? How can/do they generate new, future-oriented archives through creative practice, research, and community-based work? To what extent can/do they enact and expand repertoires of embodied memory to build and sustain community?

Approaching archives as both accrued and curated, inherited and self-generated, the colloquium also attends to archives as living and embodied. Through presentations, creative works, and discussion, it foregrounds diverse perspectives, community engagement, experimental practices, and innovative methodologies that illuminate the aesthetic and political dimensions of cultural memory while imagining archives as sites of future possibility.

This event is free and open to all! Please RSVP by selecting a free ticket via EventBrite: https://bit.ly/4grt7bS

While visionary percussionist, researcher, and teacher Milford Graves needs no introduction, his extensive body of work—which includes decades of installation pieces, medical research into the human heartbeat, his purposefully tended garden, and his martial art practices—is nearly impossible to cover comprehensively. Milford Graves: A Mind-Body Deal, edited by Mark Christmann, Celeste DiNucci, and Anthony Elms (Inventory Press, 2023) does an admirable job bringing these interrelated webs of Graves’ life together, according to reviewer Cisco Bradley.

As Bradley writes in his review, “the book includes many different voices and approaches, media and images, interviews and essays on Graves. It is not that Graves worked in different artistic and scientific disciplines, but rather that he saw the entirety of his life’s work as a web of interconnections: the mind and the body, music and the heart, healing and rhythm, martial arts and body chemistry. [. . .] This book pushes in many directions towards an understanding of the fullness of Graves’ life and work.”

To read the full review, and to read the rest of our latest issue of Critical Studies in Improvisation / Études critiques en improvisation, visit: https://bit.ly/45A0vrP

As this year's MILE Camp draws to a close, we're introducing you to two outstanding improvisers who you can catch in the final Festival musique du moment events tomorrow (August 14th), at the historic Bell House (167, route 132 Ouest) in Percé!

Dong-Won Kim and Marianne Trudel will perform with Jesse Stewart, Siaka Diabaté, and MILE Camp participants)! Their performance with Stewart, Diabaté, and camp participants will be at 3:30 PM. Later, at 8 PM, they will appear in various collaborative configurations featuring Stewart and Diabaté!

Percussionist, pedagogue, vocalist, composer, improviser, Dong-Won Kim has studied various forms of traditional music from great Korean music masters. In 1987, he was a political prisoner for illegal assembly at a funeral ceremony for an innocent young victim who got killed by a policeman’s tear gas gun shot. By participating in many intercultural projects, he has devoted himself to sharing the profound beauty of Korean traditional culture and music with the world. He has performed in Europe, the U.S.A., Japan, and many other countries, especially as a member of “The Silk Road Ensemble,” led by cellist Yo-Yo Ma. Kim currently teaches music online as a professor of Wonkwang Digital University, Korea. He has also written a fairy tale known as “Story of Samulnori” (2001) and was featured in a music documentary film, Intangible Asset Number 82 (2009).

Marianne Trudel is a multi-talented pianist, composer, improvisor, and arranger. Passionate in the act of creativity, both in a relationship to nature and with human beings, she shows a great enthusiasm for all that is alive! A generous and engaging artist, a veritable powerhouse in Quebec and Canada’s instrumental music scene, she has presented multiple artistic projects that not only bring her considerable skills to the fore but also her keen sense of creativity. Her moving, spellbinding music is not easily labelled, one of its many strengths. At once poetic and bold, sophisticated and catchy, authentic and unique, her music cross-cuts a wide swath of musical interests.

Energetic and prolific, Marianne pursues an active career in a variety of settings ranging from solo performances to small and large ensembles. She has performed her music in thirteen countries. Recipient of numerous awards and mentions, including Prix du CALQ – Artist of the year 2023 (Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec – Laval) and Prix Opus-Concert of the year– Jazz (Conseil québécois de la musique, 2023), she has produced 11 albums as a leader, all having garnered rave reviews and numerous nominations and awards (JUNO Awards, ADISQ, Prix Opus).

To see the whole schedule for Festival musique du moment, check out the link here: https://bit.ly/4zasqfA

It's time for you to meet two more of this year's performers at MILE Camp's concert series, Festival musique du moment! Happening this week in the Gaspésie, the festival will feature (among others) guest musicians Inbal Zadok and Siaka Diabaté!

You can catch both of them performing with Jesse Stewart at a pop-up concert on Friday, August 14th at 9 AM! That show happens at Au Pic de L'Aurore (1, route 132 Ouest, Percé). Later that same day, Siaka Diabaté will appear with Jesse Stewart, Dong-Won Kim, and Marianne Trudel at the Bell House (167, route 132 Ouest, Percé).

To see the whole schedule for Festival musique du moment, check out the link here: https://bit.ly/4zasqfA

Inbal Zadok was born in 1971. It was at the age of 22, during a trip to India, that he attended a sitar concert for the first time. From that day on, and for more than 25 years, he lived in Varanasi, India, studying Indian classical music with his guru, Pt Amarnath Mishra. He has been living in Anse à Beaufils since 2019, where he continues his musical quest.

MILE Camp is happening now, and taking place alongside it is Festival musique du moment, featuring MILE Camp faculty, participants, and guest musicians!

Meet Jesse Stewart, this year's MILE Camp faculty lead! Jesse is a composer, improviser, percussionist, artist, and educator. His music has been documented on over twenty recordings including Stretch Orchestra’s self-titled debut album, which was honoured with the 2012 “Instrumental Album of the Year” Juno award. He has been widely commissioned as a composer and artist. In 2012, he founded “We Are All Musicians” (WAAM), an organization dedicated to making music as broadly accessible as possible. Through the WAAM initiative, he has conducted hundreds of inclusive music workshops and performances. He has received numerous awards and honours including the Ottawa Arts Council’s Mid-Career Artist Award (2017) and the Ottawa Arts Council Community Arts Educator Award (2023). In 2014, he was named to the Order of Ottawa. In 2022, he was elected to the College of New Scholars of the Royal Society of Canada. He is a faculty member in Carleton University’s School for Studies in Art and Culture.

You can catch him in concert multiple times this week if you're in the Gaspésie, where MILE Camp and Festival musique du moment are running! To see the whole schedule for Festival musique du moment, check out the link here: https://bit.ly/4zasqfA

“The Williamsburg Avant-Grade is a living document: one that breathes the aesthetic richness and creative boldness of a thriving underground arts scene in turn-of-the-century Brooklyn, one that would later be subsumed by capital.”

In his review of Cisco Bradley’s book The Williamsburg Avant-Garde: Experimental Music and Sound on the Brooklyn Waterfront (Duke UP, 2023), Benjamin Barson considers how its author “captures the importance of community-led arts initiatives—and the sheer tenacity of the cultural workers who make them possible—in this inspiring monograph.”

You can check out Barson’s review of this new book in the latest edition of our journal, Critical Studies in Improvisation / Études critiques en improvisation: https://bit.ly/4wNxWmP

And be sure to explore the rest of the issue! You can access the whole thing here: https://bit.ly/4we4FAy

In his review of European Echoes: Jazz Experimentalism in Germany, 1950-1975 by Harald Kisiedu, Dr. Jeff Schwartz argues that this book not only offers detailed discussions of major figures in this scene, but also “problematizes the concept of the ‘Emancipation’ of European free music from American models.” “Kisiedu joins George Lewis and others in noting the racial connotations of ‘liberating’ European improvised music from African American roots,” Schwartz writes, offering that Kisiedu “illuminates ongoing flows of influence, collaboration, and authority, considering the internationalization of free jazz across the Black Atlantic and beyond.”

If you are curious about Kisiedu’s research and such figures as Peter Brötzmann, Alexander von Schlippenbach, Manfred Schoof, Irène Schweizer, Ernst-Ludwig Petrowsky, Joachim Kühn, and Ulrich Gumpert, and Bernd Alois Zimmermann’s work with Schoof and Schlippenbach, this book is well worth exploring.

Read the review in our latest edition of Critical Studies in Improvisation / Études critiques en improvisation! https://bit.ly/4woJHPG

If you're in Québec's Gaspésie Region next Friday, August 14th, you simply must attend a full day of Festival musique du moment programming!

The day will begin with a performance by Inbal Zadok (sitar), Jesse Stewart (frame drum) and Siaka Diabaté (kora and balafon). This performance will take place at 9 a.m. in the lobby of the Au Pic de l'Aurore inn (1, Route 132 West, Percé)!

Later on Friday, two events will be held at the historic Bell House (167, Rte 132 West, Percé)! The first, at 3:30 p.m., is the closing concert of the improvisation camp Coin-du-Banc en folie. This performance will reflect the collaborative learning and musical exploration that the participants as well as the camp facilitator and facilitators have engaged in throughout the week.

This unique event will be followed at 8 p.m. with an evening of performances by Jesse Stewart, camp facilitator and percussionist; Dong-Won Kim, percussionist and singer; Marianne Trudel, pianist; and Siaka Diabaté, kora player. These performers will appear in various collaborative formations.

All Festival musique du moment events are free and open to all! Please note, however, that space is limited.

Festival musique du moment is presented in partnership with Au Pic de l'aurore and the Société historique de Coin-du-Banc/Corner of the Beach Historical Society, with the support of the Musagetes Foundation. For more information, visit the Festival page here: https://bit.ly/4fOY2zT

“Attending to ambient music (and soundscapes) generates new ways to break down barriers between human/animal, natural/artificial, physical/digital, and living/non-living things,” Elk Paauw writes. “In surviving against late-stage capitalism and the destruction of our planet, keying into relations with non-human being is essential.”

Paauw’s zine, “Attending to Soundscapes as Phenomenological Practice,” is a visually delightful, beautifully articulated dive into ambient music and soundscapes around the world. This contribution to the latest issue of Critical Studies in Improvisation / Études critiques en improvisation specifically details how to engage in a phenomenological reading of ambient music to “key into” one’s surroundings and open up one’s mind relationally to our environment and non-human subjects. This engagement is explored visually as a comic as well as sonically, with an inter-media blend of the physical book as an art object, coupled with a digital suggested listening playlist, an appendix with a poem by Richard Brautigan, and an exercise from Pauline Oliveros’ Software for People, all of which acts as a jumping-off point for the reader/listener to kickstart their own phenomenologically-motivated ambient music practice.

Read the zine now: https://www.erudit.org/en/journals/csi/2026-v17-n1-csi010967/1126922ar/

Paauw is currently a PhD candidate at the University of Western Ontario in Theory and Criticism, where their thesis research (in comic form!) touches on issues of the subject through time as portrayed in trans graphics. You can learn more here: https://www.elkpapa.com/about

For the eighth year, our Musical Improvisation at Land's End (MILE) Camp is taking place in Québec's Gaspésie Region, complete with a series of public concerts. This year, these public events will happen under the banner of Festival musique du moment.

The first of these will be a duo performance by two key figures in the IICSI research team: Ajay Heble (piano) and this year’s MILE Camp faculty leader, Jesse Stewart (percussion). This concert will happen at 8 PM this coming Tuesday (August 11th), at the Musée culturel de Coin-du-Banc/Corner of the Beach Cultural Museum (294, route 132 Est, Coin-du-Banc). Check out the poster above, and don't miss this amazing free performance if you happen to be in the Gaspé next week! Also, stay tuned for more info about additional Festival musique du moment concerts! You can see the full schedule here: https://bit.ly/4fOY2zT

MILE Camp is an annual camp for adventurous and curious musicians aged 16 and up. Located at Coin-du-Banc, a village on Québec’s Gaspé coast just minutes from the famous Rocher Percé, the camp focuses on honing participants’ musical improvisation skills and using them to inspire outreach in their communities. Dr. Ajay Heble, IICSI’s Founding Director and Founder of the award-winning Guelph Jazz Festival, says that “the coastal village of Coin-du-Banc offers an inspirational and spectacular natural setting for a summer camp devoted to musical improvisation. We contend that where the land ends, imagination begins.” Heble co-organizes the camp with Coin-du-Banc resident Alain Chalifour.

This year's MILE Camp runs from August 8–15, 2026!