Radio – Sound It Out

This special hour travels through the Sound Symposium in St. John’s Newfoundland with the members of the Summer Institute of the International Institute for Critical Studies in Improvisation. The theme for this episode is overcoming aversion to discomfort through group improvising. The Summer Institute brought together scholars and practitioners of all descriptions, not everyone skilled in every variety of improvisation. We pushed our boundaries and came face to face with the normative limits of much performance styles. Hear George Blake and I interviewing the founder of the Symposium, Kathy Clark-Wherry, as well as Memorial University Archivist, Colleen Quigley, who likes to recollect this bi-annual event through the visual imagery of the event posters. The Harbour Symphony and local opinions on it. Anders Eskildsen on Sound Painting, Chris Tonelli and Un-piched Singing, and Jason Cullimore speaking about the evolutionary origins of music as a way of group bonding, articulating why we feel more able to take expressive risks in groups than on our own: these are all patches in this episode’s quilt! This originally aired on CFRU 93.3FM on August 18, 2014.

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 we inquire into the process of group decision-making, and how artistic collaboration can illuminate what it means to act together in new formations of community. 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 Studies in Improvisation. This episode aired on June 21, 2019.

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 making assumptions about how the social is involved in any particular musical or artistic event. The social is not the only component in what Born calls musical assemblages, but in my conversation with her in this episode, tools for describing this aspect of it are illuminatingly explained. 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 Studies in Improvisation. This episode aired on December 18, 2018.

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 humanistic hangover and embrace a methodological cybernetic posthumanism. 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 Studies in Improvisation. This episode aired on Tuesday November 27, 2018.

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 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 Studies in Improvisation. This episode aired on Tuesday November 13, 2018.

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 experimenter Amirtha Kidambi, Canadian singer/songwriter Thanya Iyer, and IISCI’s own Kevin McNeilly of UBC. 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 Studies in Improvisation. This episode aired on Tuesday November 5, 2018.

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 and virtuosic experimentation with extended technique. 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 Studies in Improvisation. This episode aired on Tuesday October 16, 2018.

‘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 at the Po River Delta in Italy to listen to the river Po in preparation to perform at the UNESCO International Jazz Day in Padova. Join us in this reflection on silence and its surprises. 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 Studies in Improvisation. This episode aired on Tuesday October 2, 2018.

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 Studies in Improvisation. This episode aired on Thursday August 31st, 2017.

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 basis. Sound It Out is produced and hosted by Rachel Elliott in conjunction with the International Institute for Critical Studies in Improvisation. This episode aired on Tuesday May 8th, 2018.

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 ills of society and also at our own selves. This will wake you up. 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 Studies in Improvisation. This episode aired on Tuesday April 10th, 2018.

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 Schafer's expression: they may not be pleasant but the unpleasantness is good for you. Artists: Joëlle Léandre, Catherine Jaunaiux, Ikue Mori, Julianna Barwick, Kim Gordon, Jane Rigler, France-Marie Uitti, Susie Ibarra, and Sainkho Namtchylak. The research for this episode is influenced by Dana Reason Myers' doctoral dissertation(2002): The Myth of Absence: Representation, Reception and the Music of Experimental Women Improvisors. 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 Studies in Improvisation. This episode aired on March 13th, 2018.

"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, and insightful interpretation about experimental music practice in Canada, as it pertains to our understanding of ourselves living with this land over time.  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 Studies in Improvisation. This episode aired on February 27th, 2018.

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 TV host in North America, to the Womanist dub poet and Doctor of Philosophy Afua Cooper, Wundagurl, Brampton’s pre-eminent bedroom beat-maker turned Grammy nominee, and Mélissa Laveaux who, singing for the first time in créole, refracts haïtian heritage in Radyo Siwèl. Also: Lillian Allen, Portia White, Michie Mee, Salome Bey and more! 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 Studies in Improvisation. This episode aired on February 13th, 2018.

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 freeze them and examine them later as if from a bird’s eye perspective? Hear this discussion with music theorist and trombone player Dr. Chris Stover (U of Arizona), who is (fittingly) in the midst developing a two-pronged approach to real-time analysis of improvised music. Also hear a recorded performance by Marshall Trammell (Music Research Strategies) and Kade Twist (Postcommodity), in which they verbally analyze their own music while they make it. 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 Studies in Improvisation. This episode aired on January 23, 2018.

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 of such definition is had. Post-doctoral research that circumvents the debate entirely concludes the episode: I-Ying Wu’s Daoist approach to practice-based improvisation research. Hear the voices of renowned Canadian novelist Dr. Cecil Foster, Music Professor Dr. Jason Stanyek (University of Oxford), Taiwanese qigong improviser Dr. I-Ying Wu, and award-winning interdisciplinary scholar Dr. Rebecca Caines (University of Regina). Music from Danielle Palardy Roger, Sandy Ewen, Mary Lattimore, and Mahalia Jackson. 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 Studies in Improvisation. This episode aired on January 9, 2018.

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 impetus. This episode aired on CFRU on Tuesday December 5 at 5pm in Guelph, Ontario. Sound It Out is produced by Rachel Elliott with the International Institute for Critical Studies in Improvisation.

'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 arrangements of songs sung as fictional dramatizations of personalities from the Asylum’s patient directory. Hear a recent discussion with Simone about the the process and purpose of creating this collection of songs, as well as clips from a previous conversation on the topic of character journaling, speaking uncomfortable truths, and the impact of work as a speech facilitator on her song writing process. 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 Studies in Improvisation. This episode of Sound It Out was broadcast on CFRU on October 17, 2017.

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 of improvisations for solo piano, Coldwater Stories, that imaginatively narrate his experiences of the intimate motilities of Newfoundland’s living and abiding natural beings. This episode is best experienced while dancing expansively in the privacy of one's own living room. 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 Studies in Improvisation. This episode of Sound It Out was broadcast on CFRU on September 26, 2017.

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 as some improvised commentary from your host Rachel Elliott. 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 Studies in Improvisation. This episode of Sound It Out was broadcast on CFRU on September 12, 2017.

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 is the Wolf Howl. Hear my discussion with Chief Park Naturalist Rick Stronks of Ontario’s Algonquin Provincial Park, and a talk by Sound Artist and Scholar Erik Deluca about how we can overcome the nature/culture distinction in our engagement with the howling wolf (both within and without). 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, researched, edited, and hosted by Rachel Elliott in conjunction with the International Institute for Critical Studies in Improvisation. This episode of Sound It Out was broadcast on CFRU on August 22, 2017.

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 of this way of being together while apart to make a special kind of music, variously named telematics, distributed performance, networked performance, multi-site performance etc. One particular feature of this mode of connection (and, it turns out, of all of the ways we connect, even 'in person') is latency, the experience of delay created by the distance a signal must travel before it is returned to us. Finding out how latency is explored in telematic music gives us fresh and surprising insights into the nature of human perception and what it really means to be present. This episode originally aired on CFRU 93.3FM in Guelph on July 18th, 2017 at 5pm. Sound It Out generally airs new episodes on a fortnightly basis, all of which can be listened to extemporaneously by subscribing to our podcast or visiting our website or Soundcloud page. It is produced by Rachel Elliott in conjunction with the International Institute for Critical Studies in Improvisation.

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. You never knew teaching and learning could be so exciting! This episode of Sound It Out originally aired on CFRU 93.3FM in Guelph Ontario on Tuesday June 20, 2017 at 5pm EST.

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 on the the pace of perception and sense-making (by Richelle Forsey and Rachel Elliott) Listen and be lulled into serine contemplation! This episode of Sound It Out originally aired on CFRU 93.3FM in Guelph Ontario on Tuesday June 6, 2017 at 5pm EST.

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 improvising musicians located in Toronto Ontario during the 70s and 80s; he is now completing a dissertation which takes up that history through the critical lens that academic rigour demands. Enjoy this fascinating chat about the places of renewal in creative communities. This episode originally aired on CFRU 93.3FM on May 23, 2017 at 5pm.

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. In combination with the work of Emmanuel Levinas about our primordial responsibility towards others when confronted with, in particular, their face, Francesco Paradiso brings Derrida’s ideas about hospitality to bear on group improvisation in this talk that cumulates a week’s worth of research as our guest at the International Institute for Critical Studies in Improvisation, here at the University of Guelph. Dr. Francesco Paradiso is a Research Assistant at the University of Wolverhampton in the UK. He completed his PhD in 2014 at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia. This episode originally aired on CFRU 93.3FM in Guelph Ontario on May 9, 2017 at 5pm. Sound It Out is produced, hosted, and edited by Rachel Elliott.

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 entre autres éclairent les activités créatives qui sous-tendent la cohésion sociale récemment thematizé dans les rapports sur la tempête de neige de la semaine dernière. Cet épisode a été diffusé le 28 mars 2017 sur CFRU 93.3FM à Guelph Ontario à 17h.

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 stage, but also between performers and their audience, as well between musicians considered from a larger angle: what does it take on an arts managerial level to entrench the relationships of inclusivity, exchange, and relationship forged on stage? That is, how do you make these musical relationships last and feed the other points of contact and engagement? Hear discussions with theatre creator Sarah Kitz, drummer and composer Nick Fraser, and a talk by veteran music advocate David Dacks. This episode originally aired on CFRU 93.3FM in Guelph, Ontario on Tuesday February 28th at 5pm.

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 Draw To. This episode is a conversation between Kid Koala and Dr. Mark V Campbell, himself a DJ and scholar on DJ culture, from September 2016. They talk about Kid Koala's origins in classical piano, learning to scratch by sneaking in to his sister's bedroom, the impossible saga of his first DJ battle, why he learned the blues scale, playing in the band Bullfrog (1994-2004), as well as why he is required to perform in a Koala Bear costume (it's not by choice). This episode originally aired on CFRU 93.3FM, Guelph's campus and community radio station, at 5pm on Tuesday, January 31, 2017. Tune in every second Tuesday for new episodes! - on the dial at 93.3FM in the Guelph area - streaming live at cfru.ca - streaming live using the Tune In Radio app - as a podcast by subscribing on Itunes etc.

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 form of improvised composition. Today hear an intimate reading performed by me of Adu-Gilmore’s paper entitled “Studio Improv as Compositional Process Through Case Studies of Ghanaian Hiplife and Afrobeats.” The reading of the paper is intellectually stimulating, and the examples of the music discussed in it, by Appietus and DJ Breezy respectively, kinetically irresistible: I dare you not to dance! This episode originally aired on CFRU 93.3FM, Guelph’s campus and community radio station on Tuesday January 17th, 2016, at 5pm. comments welcome! below or on twitter! @Cs_walk_with_me

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 International Institute for Critical Studies in Improvisation. Discussion with Ellen Waterman, reflections and poetry by Laura Broadbent. This episode originally aired on CFRU 93.3FM, Guelph’s college and community radio station on December 20th, 2016 at 5pm. Sound It Out broadcasts new episodes every second Tuesday on CFRU at 5pm!

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 used improvisation to make Brother Frank, a filmic response to an encounter with a monk on the Niagara Peninsula – part of a self-implicating exploration of the tactility of craftmanship. Jenny Mitchell tells the rollicking tale of her Golden Bus, which she uses as a mobile venue and sound production studio offering a place-responsive platform for the expression of locally embedded narrative arts. Tune-in as Iris Fraser-Gudrunas’ film Brother Frank is screened on Jenny Mitchell’s Golden Bus! This episode originally aired on CFRU 93.3FM in Guelph, Ontario, Tuesday December 6, 2015. Sound It Out airs on Tuesdays at 5pm, new episodes every other week.

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 by Janelle Monáe. These anthems use improvisation and the ethics embedded in it to articulate shared values and create social memory. This passionate and jocular discussion weaves together peace studies, decolonization studies, and improvisation theory to offer a platform for reflection on the current social and political climate and how best to channel political emotions such as rage. This episode originally aired on CFRU 93.3FM in Guelph, Ontario on November 22, 2016. There are new episodes of Sound It Out every other week. Sound It Out airs on CFRU 93.3FM at 5pm on Tuesdays.

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 Dennis Peters during her sabbatical at Cambridge, UK. Bertinetto discusses the implications of Immanuel Kant's description of beauty on improvisation, conceived as the site of genesis for new avenues of aesthetic communication. This episode originally aired on CFRU 93.3FM in Guelph, Ontario, on Tuesday November 8, 2016 at 5pm.

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 the monument (i.e. facing their recorded music as an autonomous object), and the urgency their regional dispersion gives to their playing when they get together, accentuating the vertiginous ‘now’ at the heart of all improvisation. This episode originally aired on CFRU 93.3FM in Guelph, Ontario at 5pm on Tuesday October 25, 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 creative music world into a cloud of stunned sadness. Read more about this intrepid musician at http://www.kenaldcroft.com/ This episode originally aired on CFRU 93.3FM at 5pm on Tuesday September 27, 2016. Sound it Out airs new episodes every other Tuesday on CFRU 93.3FM in Guelph, Ontario. 5pm.

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 of July, 2016. Hear Faun Fables, Lary 7, Maria Chavez, and Jennifer Castle along with other intriguing improvisatory scenarios! The multi-sensorial encounters occasioned by this three day festival extended the improvisational happenings onstage out into the wild landscape around it, fostering extraneous joy and jest in every resounding sentient present. This episode originally aired on CFRU 93.3FM on Tuesday October 11, 2016 at 5pm EST.

In the late 1990s and early 2000s, there 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 stood waiting. Cisco Bradley of the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn speaks with me today about his research into the rise and decline of the Williamsburg music scene. Take a look at his related website: https://jazzrightnow.com/ This discussion is in anticipation of his talk on the subject entitled "Pirate Radio and Bohemian Cafés: The Rise of the Williamsburg Scene in Brooklyn" at the Guelph Jazz Festival Colloquium this week. Hear Dynasty Electric, Gold Sparkle Band, Mary Halvorson and Jessica Pavone, as well as Memorize the Sky, recorded live at Read Café. This episode originally aired on Wednesday September 14th at 7pm on CFRU 93.3FM in Guelph Ontario. Sound It Out airs new episodes every second Tuesday at 5pm.

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 to a stultifying livelihood characterized by repetition of sameness, rather than difference. This conversation is a preview of the talk Marcel Swiboda (University of Leeds) will give at the Guelph Jazz Festival Colloquium entitled "Contingent Comportments: Improvisational Modes of Being and Knowing in Music and Everyday Life." Not to be missed! This episode originally aired Tuesday September 13, 2016 at 5pm on CFRU 93.3FM in Guelph, Ontario .

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, has been too caught up in the politics of recognition and the performative vision of the subject, as described by theorists such as Judith Butler based in Hegel’s dialectic of self-consciousness. In this energetic and inspiring discussion, Mullen considers the history of jazz as Black Critical Praxis to recommend an improvisatist account of the subject over the widely accepted performative view. Hear songs from Ernestine Anderson and Herbie Hancock! This episode originally aired at a *special time* on CFRU 93.3FM at 6pm on Monday September 12, 2016. Sound It Out airs new episodes every other Tuesday at 5pm on CFRU in Guelph, Ontario.

The Guelph Jazz Festival has been taking place annually since 1994, attracting world-class performers and audiences to our dear and 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 You will hear musical selections and minimalist commentary from your host Rachel Elliott. Featuring songs by Cuban-Canadian pianist David Virelles, Peregrine Falls, and Not the Wind, Not the Flag, Esmerine, Amina Claudine Myers, and Myra Melford. You may be surprised by what you hear in this mostly-music edition of Sound It Out! This episode originally aired on CFRU 93.3FM on August 30, 2016 at 5pm. There are new episodes of Sound it Out on CFRU every other Tuesday at 5pm. You can also subscribe to the podcast on iTunes. And rate us!

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 improvisation with the natural world with a focus on fostering love acceptance of self and other. This episode is a collage of field recordings peppered with interviews and reflections on the musical events and social collisions that took place on the unseasonably cold day in May 2016. Featuring Environmental Percussion with Richard Burrows, Mino Ode Kwewak N’Gamowak/ Good Hearted Women Singers, Puppets Elora etc. This episode originally aired on CFRU 93.3 FM, Guelph’s community radio station, on August 16, 2016 at the accidental time of 4pm. Usually Sound It Out airs on Tuesdays at 5pm. New Episodes every other week!

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 between the musician and her instruments is the theme of Lisa Gamble’s approach to making wicked glitchy beats out of odd and old adapted electronics. Gamble’s educated-guess, trial-and-error attitude eschews attempts to control or master instruments; she explores and responds, leaving them the autonomy be surprising. The result is fresh, energetic, and often, danceable. This conversation with Lisa Gamble originally aired on CFRU 93.3FM Guelph’s community radio station on July 19, 2016. Sound It Out airs on CFRU 93.3FM every other Tuesday at 5pm. Stream episodes live at cfru.ca

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 speakers is the host of this show, me! You will hear me speak about my motivation and approach to making this show, and why sometimes I under-explain what the show is about. Please add comments below! In addition to my ramblings you will hear about Toronto improvised music history, avoiding hierarchies through dialogic pedagogy, the improvised archive, the cinema of improvisation, and the ethics of interspecies engagement. This episode originally aired on CFRU 93.3FM (cfru.ca) in Guelph, Ontario on July 4, 2016. Send me a tweet @Cs_walk_with_me Sound It Out airs on CFRU every second Tuesday at 5pm.

What comes to mind when you think about East Germany during the Cold War? Transnational black experimentalism? It’s not the first thing right? On today’s episode of Sound It Out, the 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 location for the negotiation of political values, particularly surrounding imperialism, democracy, the West, and the Soviet Union. Hear about socialist realism, the specter of decadence, and the rooting of experimentalist influences from the United States in this meticulously researched lesser-known history of an important branch of experimentalism as a transnational phenomenon. This originally aired on CFRU 93.3FM on May 24, 2016 at 5pm. Tune in every second Tuesday to listen, or stream it live at cfru.ca.

How accessible is improvisation? In this archived interview from 2011, Mauricio Martinez speaks scholars, musicians, artists, and technologists from the Deep Listening Institute and the Adaptive Use Musical Instruments Project about the adaptable musical software (AUMI) which enables those with disabilities to make musical phrases play through gesture and movement. Hear Occupational Therapist Leaf Miller, Pauline Oliveros, Gillian Siddall, Ellen Waterman, Sherrie Tucker, Jaclyn Heyen, Paula Josa-Jones, Cera Yiu, and Iris Hodgson discuss the motivational beginnings of the project, their experiences working with AUMI at Abilities First in Poughkeepsie, New York, and what it means to think about improvisation as a human right. This episode originally aired on CFRU 93.3FM community radio station in Guelph, Ontario. It aired on May 10, 2016 at 1700h. On a side note, one of the participants in this conversation, Jaclyn Heyen, is currently undertaking a and blogging about a cross-country solo (with dog) motorcycle journey with trailer. Follow her at: http://www.jhblueroad.com/

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 to a score or composition, and its associated performances. Lewis discusses his proposal to revive intentionalism in aesthetics, making the, I think, highly appetizing suggestion that we ought to think of improvised music according to the vagaries of the representational visual arts, not via the overblown concepts on offer by traditional music ontology. This episode originally aired on CFRU 93.3FM in Guelph Ontario on April 12, 2016, at 5pm.

“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 of our in uterine beginnings, and “listen the world into wholeness.” Hear us discussing his role in Mindfulness Without Borders, his Monday morning improvisations with Big Beat, the use of vocables in shamanic therapeutic practices, helping trained singers meet their edge, Alfred Tomatis, Robert Bly, Mind-Up, and more. This episode that aired originally on CFRU 93.3FM on March 29th, 2016.

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 chapter of his 2009 book A Power Stronger than Itself: The AACM and American Experimental Music into the Opera Afterword. Hear Herald Kisiedu in conversation with Lewis on this episode! Originally aired on CFRU 93.3FM on March 15, 2016. Sound It Out airs biweekly on Tuesdays at 5pm on CFRU 93.3FM.

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 of meaning all together, a sensory-motor, embodied sort of meaning. Maybe it has no meaning at all, in which case we might wonder how it got so lucky, so pure, so empty in this world of over-signification. This past weekend I attended the Somewhere There creative music festival in Toronto at the Tranzac. On this episode you will hear a roundtable discussion moderated by Joe Sorbara featuring the thoughts and sounds of: Peter Luteck, Germaine Liu, Paul Newman, Kyle Brenders, Ken Aldcroft, and Nicole Rampersaud. This episode originally aired on CFRU 93.3FM on March 8th, 2016. Sound It Out is hosted by Rachel Elliott who is a PhD candidate in Philosophy at the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada. Sound It Out is produced in conjunction with the International Institute for Critical Studies in Improvisation. The show explores whether and how improvised music can serve as a basis for discursive inclusivity, the creation of new forms of shared meaning, and more democratic means of connecting with each other. Sound It Out airs on CFRU every other Tuesday at 5pm!

Here we consider how local music scenarios influence and are influenced by the styles and genres or other times and places using the ‘idea-picture’ of the rhisome from Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia (1980). Scott Henderson of Brock University talks with me about his research into the musicscape of Saint-Étienne France, discussing the influence of geographic contour (the seven hills), community radio (Radio Dio), economic transition, and international networks on the creation of a local music scene. Hear Raymonde Howard (Lætitia Fournier), Angil (MickaëlMottet), and the Hidden Tracks, as we think through the way that musical recipes, or deliberate artistic constraints (Cf. Oulipo Saliva), can foster just the kind of formative interactions that some of us might naïvely reserve for ‘purely improvised’ musical formats. Originally aired on CFRU 93.3FM in February 2015. Sound It Out is hosted by Rachel Elliott who is a PhD candidate in Philosophy at the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada. Sound It Out is produced in conjunction with the International Institute for Critical Studies in Improvisation. The show explores whether and how improvised music can serve as a basis for discursive inclusivity, the creation of new forms of shared meaning, and more democratic means of connecting with each other. Sound It Out airs on Guelph’s campus and community radio station, CFRU 93.3FM, on alternating Tuesdays at 5pm.