Performers

Colloquium Day 3

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Click below to see participant biographies. All events at the Macdonald Stewart Art Centre.

Keynote Talk: “Improvisation in American Taiko”

Panel: “Play What You Are: Improvisation and Affirmation”

Workshop: “Induction, Deduction, Conduction: Approaches to Structured Improvisation”

Panel: “Transdiasporic Collaborations in the African Diaspora”

Workshop: “Improvisation, Interpretation, Imagination”

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Deborah Wong

Keynote Talk, Friday, September 5, 9:00 – 10:00 am

Deborah Wong teaches at the University of California, Riverside and is an ethnomusicologist. She specializes in the musics of Asian America and Thailand and holds an M.A. and Ph.D. (1991) from the University of Michigan and a B.A., magna cum laude (1982), in anthropology and music from the University of Pennsylvania. She has published two books: Sounding the Center: History and Aesthetics in Thai Buddhist Ritual (University of Chicago Press, 2001) addresses musicians' rituals and their implications for the cultural politics of Thai court music and dance in late twentieth-century Bangkok, and Speak It Louder: Asian Americans Making Music (Routledge, 2004) focused on music, race, and identity work in a series of case studies including Southeast Asian immigrant musics, Chinese American and Japanese American jazz in the Bay Area, and Asian American hip-hop. She is a member of Satori Daiko, the performing group of the Taiko Center of Los Angeles, and her book in progress will address Japanese American drumming in California. She is President of the Society for Ethnomusicology for 2007-09. Dr. Wong is also a keynote speaker and course facilitator of the inaugural Summer Institute for Critical Studies in Improvisation at the University of Guelph.

Abstract
“Improvisation in American Taiko”

Improvised solos in Japanese American drumming are a site of experimentation where ideas about tradition and intercultural fusion run into one another. They are also a place where fear and machismo crystallize, and where gendered ideas about skill are put front and center. Wong will show several video examples of taiko improvisation and will try to get inside the moment of free play.

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Greg Tate

Panel: “Play What You Are: Improvisation and Affirmation”
Friday, September 5, 11:30 am – 12:30 pm

“The Black Rock Coalition”

See Burnt Sugar's bio.

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Matana Roberts

Panel: “Play What You Are: Improvisation and Affirmation”
Friday, September 5, 11:30 am – 12:30 pm

“Creativity and Improvisation”

See Matana Roberts's bio.

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Jeremy Brown

Panel: “Play What You Are: Improvisation and Affirmation”
Friday, September 5, 11:30 am – 12:30 pm

Jeremy S. Brown is Professor and former Head of the Music Department at the University of Calgary where he teaches and has taught saxophone, the symphonic band and courses in music education. He is founder of the Summer Music Festival at the University of Calgary. In 1999 he was awarded the University of Calgary Student’s Union Teaching Excellence Award. He earned the Doctor of Musical Arts degree from The Ohio State University. Dr. Brown has published more than twenty papers and conference presentations in the last decade as well performing in hundreds of concerts in The USA, Canada and in Europe.

Abstract
“Salvation Army Addiction Rehabilitation Project”

At the invitation of the Salvation Army, I piloted a jam that would encourage wellness through music performance with clients in an addiction recovery program at the Salvation Army’s Centre of Hope in downtown Calgary, Alberta Canada. I also hoped to find ways that students could interact with the program and in the impoverished downtown eastside community through improvisation. The project ran from October 15, 2007 until December 10, 2007. The approach was a series of connected grooves that included shuffle, swing and a variety of funk and rock-based themes. Clients were encouraged to share their own melodic and rhythm-based riffs. Emphasis was on listening, ensemble blending, adapting, complementing and accompanying as well as individual improvised solos.

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Induction, Deduction, Conduction: Approaches to Structured Improvisation

Workshop, Friday, September 5, 1:00 – 2:00 pm

Greg Tate (host), Lewis “Flip” Barnes Jr., Paula Henderson, Jared Michael Nickerson, Stephen Lyons, JP Carter, Jesse Zubot, Hidayat Honari, Gordon Grdina, Neelamjit Dhillon, Hamin Honari, Satoko Fujii, Natsuki Tamura, Han Bennink, Wolter Wierbos, Mary Oliver, Michael Moore.

Members of four hot improvising ensembles explore methods for creating music in large ensembles. Don’t miss this epic meeting of some of the world’s most dynamic and diverse musicians, hosted by Greg Tate from Burnt Sugar.

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Karl Evangelista

Panel: “Transdiasporic Collaborations in the African Diaspora”
Friday, September 5, 2:15 – 3:30 pm

Karl Evangelista is a graduate student in the Music Improvisation MFA at Mills College in Oakland, California. He is presently conducting research on the Blue Notes, a group of South African exile improvisers from the last half-century.

Abstract
“The Blue Notes: Free Music and Exile in the Apartheid Era”

This project examines the life and music of the Blue Notes, a mixed-race group of South African musicians who expatriated to Europe in the 1960s (members: trumpeter Mongezi Feza, alto saxophonist Dudu Pukwana, tenor saxophonist Nick Moyake, pianist Chris McGregor, bassist Johnny Dyani, and percussionist Louis Moholo). Although the Blue Notes played a large role in the development of modern improvised music and the "culture war" of anti-apartheid South African artists, their music remains scarcely available and seldom researched, and all but one Blue Note (Moholo) perished before the end of apartheid. My research dissects the extant body of knowledge on this music, including (independently conducted) interviews with Moholo and many in the Blue Notes' personal and musical circles, numerous sonic documents, and available literature, with the goal of understanding the Blue Notes via the identity politics and crises of the South African Diaspora.

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Jason Squinobal

Panel: “Transdiasporic Collaborations in the African Diaspora”
Friday, September 5, 2:15 – 3:30 pm

For more than ten years Jason Squinobal has been a professional saxophonist performing in various jazz venues throughout New England, New York City, Boston, and Pennsylvania. He has been trained extensively in jazz performance and improvisation by some of the finest jazz educators including Jerry Bergonzi, Dr. Nathan Davis, and George Garzone. Recently, Mr. Squinobal has been composing original jazz compositions that merge elements of West African music with elements of Jazz for both Big Band and

Jazz Combo. As an active ethnomusicologist and jazz scholar at the University of Pittsburgh, Mr. Squinobal has conducted numerous research projects concerning jazz, music of the African diaspora, and intercultural interaction. His Masters thesis entitled “The Use of African Music in Jazz From 1926-1964: An Investigation of the Life, Influences, and Music of Randy Weston” explores the use of traditional African Music in the jazz improvisation and compositions of Randy Weston. Mr. Squinobal is currently ABD at the University of Pittsburgh. He has begun conducting research for his Ph.D. dissertation and expects to defend the work in April 2009.

Abstract
“Randy Weston: Preserving African Roots Through Jazz Improvisation”

In this presentation I will investigate the social and cultural influences that encouraged Randy Weston to integrate traditional West African music into his jazz improvisation. In doing so, I will analyze Weston’s improvised solo on “Mystery of Love” to demonstrate the integration of African musical elements into Weston’s original jazz improvisation. The cultural environment in America from the time of the Harlem Renaissance through the Civil Rights Movement was such that African Americans sought to connect with their African roots. Weston was greatly influenced by this period of time, due in large part to his father’s consistent efforts to instill within him the importance of his African heritage.

This presentation depicts a fluid interaction of different elements of African and African American culture that came together in a very specific way to shape Weston’s life and music. Although no other person has been influenced in exactly the same way that Weston has, his influences, experiences, and musical philosophy are similar to those of other jazz musicians who were active during this time.

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DY Ngoy

Panel: “Transdiasporic Collaborations in the African Diaspora”
Friday, September 5, 2:15 – 3:30 pm

DY Ngoy is a cultural researcher and archivist whose areas of interest encompass hybridization and creolization in Linguistics and Musicology. He has been involved in field research mostly in Africa and Europe. Over the past five years, he has been involved in research to develop new techniques of documenting oral tradition. He is presently working on a book that documents the presence of American Improvisers in Paris from 1965-85.

Abstract
“Edja Kiungali: Recapturing the African Imagination”

In the aftermath of 1968, Paris witnessed an unprecedented migration of American musical practitioners, mostly in their thirties, who presented a music which was in tune with the philosophical and political issues of that time. While in Paris, this young breed of American improvisers, such as the Art Ensemble of Chicago, Steve Lacy, Alan Silva, Don Cherry, interfered with the mostly French local musicians, such as the bassist Beb Guerin and pianist Francois Tusques, among others. Paris – the metropole of the former colonial empire – also had a small representative from the Dom-Tom (Madagascar, Martinique and Guadeloupe) and newly independent countries from Africa. Two names featured extensively in the ensemble of American Improvisers, namely the Guinean alto saxophonist Jo Maka and Togolese trombonist Adolphe Winkler. These seasoned and astute West African improvisers enlightened the orchestras of the bassist Alan Silva and trumpeter Ambrose Jackson. Where Maka and Winkler had in common a West African cultural heritage, their approach to improvisation and composition was different due to their upbringing in the colonial French Empire and German Empire. In this presentation, I will propose to examine how these two musicians – in their own band (Edja Kungali) or with other ensembles (such as Alan Silva's, Ambrose Jackson's) straddled the bridge between African traditional (Agbaja, Ewe, etc.) and popular (High-life) music on one hand and the language of bebop and post-bop on the other.

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Jason Robinson

Panel: “Transdiasporic Collaborations in the African Diaspora”
Friday, September 5, 2:15 – 3:30 pm

Jason Robinson is a saxophonist and scholar. He has performed or recorded with Anthony Davis, George Lewis, Gerry Hemingway, Dana Reason, Lisle Ellis, Paul Plimley, Peter Kowald, Muhal Richard Abrams, Vinny Golia, Eugene Chadbourne, Earl Howard, Bertram Turetzky, the San Francisco Mime Troupe, Groundation, Toots and the Maytals, Apple Gabriel, Don Carlos, Ras Michael, and many others. Robinson is Visiting Assistant Professor in Music at Amherst College, where he teaches courses on improvised music, jazz and popular music. He has also taught at the University of California, San Diego and Irvine campuses. He received his Ph.D. in Music (Critical Studies and Experimental Practices) from the University of California, San Diego. Robinson is also member of the Trummerflora Collective and artistic director of Circumvention Music, an independent record label dedicated to improvised music.

Abstract
“Improvising the African Diaspora: Transdiasporic Collaboration and Musical Experimentalism”

This paper focuses on Randy Weston’ s collaborations with Gnawa musicians from Morocco and the discourse surrounding Taj Mahal’ s and Toumani Diabate’s Kulanjan project as a means of understanding the complex ways that “Africa” serves to structure some contemporary musical practices. These examples feature African American musicians in collaboration with (continental) African musicians and embody the kind of diasporic “bounce back” identified by Chude-Sokei. I am particularly interested in exploring the different relationships Weston and Majal have to African American music making—a jazz pianist and a blues vocalist/guitarist, respectively—and how these varying musical lineages impact their collaborations with African musicians.

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Improvisation, Interpretation, Imagination

Workshop, Friday, September 5, 3:45 – 4:45 pm

Jeff Reilly (host), Barry Guy, Maya Homburger

This trio, currently on a Canadian tour, bring together several imaginative approaches to music-making – from Baroque to free improvisation, and of course the unique compositional approach of the legendary Barry Guy. Presented in an intimate setting, here’s a great chance to learn how Reilly, Guy, and Homburger collaborate together.

See the performer bios for Barry Guy, Maya Homburger, and Jeff Reilly.