News, callouts, conferences, jobs, and more...

May 2023

Friends,

Welcome to the May edition of the JEN Research Interest Group newsletter. Below please find a variety of news items, announcements, callouts, new publications, and job opportunities. Summertime is a great opportunity for new projects and collaborations. If you are interested in mentoring new researchers or would like to get input on writing up a research project consider the new mentorship opportunities. Contact our mentoring chair, Dr. Tish Oney, at tishoney@gmail.com if you’re interested. We match mentors who are experienced in peer-reviewed

publishing with mentees seeking help developing research projects or professional writing skills, particularly with the goal of writing for our Jazz Education in Research and Practice journal. We have several mentoring teams currently working together and we are excited about the research progress we are making! 

I’d like to draw your attention to the callout for the 8th Rhythm Changes Conference to be held April 3-6 in Graz, Austria. This is one of the premier jazz research gatherings in Europe and beyond and a great learning and networking opportunity, hope to see you there. 

The monthly series of webinars will continue on June 2, 3pm EST with Allana Radecki - "Moving the Music: Jazz Dance and Duke Ellington," and on the first Friday of every month featuring one of the authors published in JAZZ (Jazz Education in Research and Practice). The goal of the presentations is to share the findings as well as ideas for practical implementations in the classroom and curricula. Please look for links and invitations to the webinars on the JEN website and Facebook page. They’ll be live streamed on Facebook, but those who register for the zoom webinar will be able to ask questions and interact with the panelists. All previous presentations can be accessed here.

Please feel free to share this news compilation and invite colleagues to join the mailing list and/orFacebook page. Remember to check the updated job listingshere. If you have new books/ articles/ dissertations published, send me the info to be included in the newsletter. Also send over ideas on how JENRing can help you in your jazz research and networking. Items of interest related to jazz research may also be shared on the Facebook page.

Sincerely,

Monika Herzig

JEN Research Interest Group Committee Chair

Newsletter Sections

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EARLY BIRD REGISTRATION OPEN!

⬇ FREE WEBINAR ⬇

Moving the Music:
Jazz Dance & Duke Ellington
with Allana Radecki

Shaped by the tidal forces of the New World, jazz music and dance are rooted in the Africa where the arts form a unified complex of interlocking relationships. The great composer and bandleader, Duke Ellington, exalted the African aesthetic tradition, consciously aligning his music and imagination to serve all forms of jazz dance, throughout his long career. Known to keep “one eye on the audience and one eye on the act,” he most frequently called upon tap dancers to “step inside” his music and deliver a range of styles, percussive color and visual excitement to performance.

Friday, June 2 • 3pm ET
Zoom (Members) & Facebook Live (Non-Members)

A presentation from the Jazz Education Research and Practice Journal, a publication of the Jazz Education Network.

Have a question you don't see covered above? Once registered, you will be invited to submit any questions you would like answered.

PLEASE NOTE:
JEN Members will receive a link 1-hr before the event to join the Zoom Room.

Non-members & youth (under 18) members will receive a link 1-hr before the event to join via Facebook Live. Click here for membership information.

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NEWS

In a Baltimore basement, a jazz detective strikes gold

John Fowler sat in the lobby of the Charles Theater comparing it to the place he used to know.

There was no marquee outside announcing the next performer. The restaurants and shops around the street had changed. The building that used to have a library now consisted of popcorn machines and movie posters. And the two flights of stairs that had previously led to a ticketing area and a stage had disappeared.

The building in downtown Baltimore used to be known as the Famous Ballroom. It's where Fowler spent most Sunday evenings decades ago, helping put together jazz concerts with some of the genre's giants: Art Blakey. Duke Ellington. Count Basie. John Coltrane.

"There were plastic stars and plastic moons and plastic clouds in the ceiling," Fowler said. "It was a canopy that looked like a circus tent. It was a dance hall, but everybody knew: on Sundays, come to Charles Street."

From the mid 1960s into the early '80s, nearly every Sunday starting at 5pm, the Famous Ballroom was reserved for concerts put on by volunteers from the Left Bank Jazz Society. Fowler was a charter member.

"My son grew up here. You could bring your kids; the word got out that a woman could come to the Ballroom and not be bothered if she didn't want to be bothered," Fowler said. "So we put all of that together. We've had 1,200 people in that room."

After hundreds of shows, the Ballroom deteriorated and the organization moved out by the early '80s. Still, hundreds of those live shows were recorded, mostly for the private listening of the Left Bank and for the artists themselves.

Those recordings had been stored away for decades and only about a dozen had been released commercially. But now, thanks to a couple of producers, three more recordings are out for the public to hear.

New Music USA Launches Program for Small Contemporary Music Groups

After several trial runs, New Music USA has launched its new New Music Inc program — an incubator initiative that aims to provide small, artist-led new music groups with much-needed funding and coaching. The program will be offered in three cities: Baltimore, Chicago, and New York City.

The organization envisions New Music Inc as a cohort environment where mentors can help new music groups to tackle the specific industry hurdles they face.

Over the course of a twelve to eighteen-month period, participating groups will receive a range of hands-on, skill-building opportunities, facilitated by a Program Coordinator based in their city. Financial support will also be provided for the duration of the course.

Topics covered in the sessions may include audience development, fundraising, marketing, equity and diversity, board development, and other areas of strategic planning, but can also be tailored to suit the group's specific needs.

You can apply here; applications should be received by June 12, 2023.

"New Music Inc reflects our belief that multi-faceted support — combining financial help with connectivity, learning, and sharing of experience — provides organizations with the strongest catalyst for long-term change," said Vanessa Reed, the President and CEO of New Music USA.

"We are grateful to our funders in New York, Chicago and Baltimore for enabling us to invest time and resources that will have ripple effects across the music communities and cities taking part."

"Being a New Music USA Capacity Building grantee has been key to the development of Die Jim Crow Records," said BL Shirelle, the Co-Executive Director of Die Jim Crow Records — which was part of the Capacity Building Program on which New Music Inc is based.

"In conjunction with the actual grant itself, the mentorship and consultation New Music USA provides is invaluable. It has helped us tremendously with building our infrastructure in a methodical way, setting and achieving attainable goals, and maximizing every resource in an effort to expand our bandwidth."

Open Ears Festival

June 1–4, 2023

Various venues

Kitchener, ON

Various prices, FREE / $25 per event

$150 for Festival Pass

Open Ears is celebrating its 25th year (and 23rd festival presentation) with a characteristically interesting bill of experimental art and music. Featuring film, dance, installation art, a 25th-anniversary celebration, workshops, lectures, and (of course) music, Open Ears 23 has something for all fans of the avant-garde.

There’s a lot happening in these four short days: Melody McKiver will perform a solo viola set, Yvonne Ng will lead a dance workshop, University of Guelph IMPR student Joe Sorbara will perform with the Counterstasis Trio and special guest Kathryn Ladano. . . this is really just the tip of the iceberg, so take a look at the program. Quite a few events are free, including (impressively) the workshops. So, if you’ve wanted to soak up some free instruction/collaboration in improv dance or music making, Open Ears has you covered.

The events which aren’t free cost $25 (except an installation in a museum, which is included in the museum’s general admission price). I’d say Open Ears has pretty decent pricing, with plenty of free event leeway for those with limited disposable income! If you anticipate attending all or most of the paid events, you can get festival passes here for $150.

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CALLOUTS & CONFERENCES

Utrecht University Summer School: Supervising Artistic and Practice-based Research

What are good practices of artistic and practice-based research supervision? This week-long course explores the heterogeneous processes of PhD- and postdoc-supervision in the arts with the goal of formulating shared horizons.

The course is divided into a morning and an afternoon programme. In the morning, prepared propositions will be read out (among others by Andrea Philips, Northumbria University; Mick Wilson, Gothenburg University; Christa-Maria Lerm-Hayes, University of Amsterdam; Geoff Cox, London South Bank University; and - online - Barbara Bolt, Victorian College of Arts, Melbourne) and further discussion will take place in on-site breakout groups about the insights and ideas provided. The afternoon programme focuses on practices introduced by the participants. Practices can focus on presenting and sharing a “good practice” or on discussing a concrete problem statement, all pertaining to PhD- and postdoc-supervision in the arts. In both cases, a relationship should be established with the question of pedagogical formats for sustaining a generative learning space for artistic and practice-based supervision.

Taken together, propositions and practices will focus on topics such as: experimental formats of teaching, learning, and research; existing pedagogical formats (group supervision, multilateral supervision, seminars, focus weeks, retreats); how to understand peer review; the question of the balance between individual feedback (tutorials) and collective feedback; institutional preconditions; skills across making and research; the discursive component and styles of writing; the role and significance of the performative paradigm; ethics in supervision; commitment to the logics of practice; modes of critical self-reflection (knowledge of your own strength and weaknesses); and supervising collaborative projects. 

A possible outcome of the course could be to consolidate our collective mappings into a constructive and inspiring toolkit for researchers, supervisors, and evaluators. This toolkit is necessarily infused with attention for the question of how artistic and practice-based research relates or should relate to current societal and planetary urgencies. A first draft of such a toolkit titled Setting and Reflecting on the Conditions from Within: A prospective and retrospective toolkit for artistic and practice-based researchers and their supervisors was developed in 2021-22 by Maibritt Borgen, Jacob Lund, and Iris van der Tuin with contributions of Henk Slager and will be further developed during the Summer School.

Practical information

Dates: August 21-25, 2023

Venue and co-organizing partner: BAK, basis voor aktuele kunst, Utrecht (Pauwstraat 13A, NL-3512 TG)

CFP: Musicological Society of Australia 46th National Conference

The Musicological Society of Australia is committed to advancing academic and public understanding and appreciation of music, an activity and resource that is fundamental to the wellbeing of individuals and communities and reaches into all areas of life. Accordingly, for the 2023 National Conference musicians of all kinds are invited to reflect on their musical practice, and researchers from all fields of study invited to share their research into any aspect of music.

We encourage contributions from musicologists, composers, performers, music theorists, music broadcasters, music critics and anyone else with an informed interest in the creation, practice, theory, reception, and appreciation of music. We also encourage presentation of music-related research in other fields including education, sociology, literature, history, art, film, games, psychology, medicine, Indigenous studies, anthropology, and religion.

Proposals of up to 250 words for 20 minute presentations, or pre-formed panels of 90 minutes (including discussion), should be submitted by 30 June 2023 to msaconference2023adelaide@gmail.com

All presenters must be current financial members of the MSA at the time of registering for the conference.

The MSA will provide travel grants to assist student delegates to attend, and will welcome applications once the program committee has sent out approvals. Travel assistance and at least one full bursary will also be available for Indigenous presenters.

Multiple cash prizes will be awarded for the best paper presentations by postgraduate delegates; a separate cash prize will be awarded for best presentation at the Indigenous symposium.

Rhythm Changes 8th conference, Jazz Encounters, Graz, April 3-6 2024

The eighth Rhythm Changes Conference, Jazz Encounters, will take place at the Institute for Jazz Research (University of Music and Performing Arts, Graz, Austria) from 3 to 6 April 2024. This conference is organised in conjunction with the fourteenth International Jazz Research Conference. 

Keynotes

• Keynote: Prof. George McKay (University of East Anglia, UK)

• Keynote: Maite Hontelé (trumpet player, the Netherlands)

• Closing address: Stephanie Vos (Stellenbosch University, South Africa)

We invite submissions for Jazz Encounters, a four-day multidisciplinary conference bringing together researchers, writers, musicians, critics, and others interested in jazz studies. The event will feature academic papers and panels.

Jazz is a music born of encounter. Jazz encounters are dynamic; they create synergies and frictions and have the power to reconfigure social and political spheres. To understand these encounters is to understand ongoing processes of identity-making and the history and meaning of jazz in the world. Jazz encounters have arisen from and are influenced by myriad factors, including histories and legacies of enslavement, cultural and creative exchanges, ideological contestation, technological change, new modes of communication, economic development, trade, war, occupation, and political consolidation. These processes of encounter and migration – of people, ideas, goods, and objects – shape understandings of the music and its impact on society, from the influence on the lives of individuals to the ideology of societal institutions.

We welcome papers addressing the conference theme from multiple perspectives, including cultural studies, musicology, cultural theory, music analysis, jazz history, media studies, and practice-based research. We particularly welcome contributors who identify as women or gender diverse and from other under-represented groups and communities within jazz studies and academia more generally. Within the general theme of Jazz Encounters, we have identified several sub-themes. Where relevant, please clearly specify which sub-theme you are referring to in your proposal.

As artists-researchers, we are in tension with the real and fictive expectations of both artmaking and research. Not quite king, not quite fish, we turn to the animal queendom for answers. We dive into water like the cosmopolitan kingfisher. Different bodies of water lead us to a different catch, we function well with the abundance of a range of habitats. We are masters of diving in, no matter what the circumstances might be. Easy to recognise but at times obscured by our environment, we are feathered like artists but are actually entangled artists-researchers: short tail, long beak, or both. We flutter around as observers and participants in complex systems. According to legend, if one spots us on the way to a battle, all must return home and seek peace.

Dates and Deadlines
2023, November 9-11th, on-site in Vilnius
Call for Contributions until June 11th, 2023

The symposium Not quite king, not quite fish is hosted and organised by doctoral candidates in Fine Art, Design and Architecture from the Vilnius Academy of Arts. The focus is on durational and performative forms of presentation and/or public experimentation as research.

We aim to provide opportunities to both experienced and upcoming researchers and artists to share their projects within the support structures established by temporary epistemic communities organised around four research clusters. Each cluster is conceived and moderated by doctoral candidates of the Vilnius Academy of Arts and is based on their artistic research interests.

After the successful first Congress on Artistic Research in 2021 Vilnius is establishing itself as a new meeting place for artists and researchers, blending protocols for artistic research with new experimental trajectories for thinking and doing as well as developing hybrid forms. How can the center (of attraction) of artistic research in the East of Europe blend with artistic research protocols mainly developed in the North-West of Europe? While one may believe that artistic research is already established, others still doubt why research needs to be “artistic”? Most of these trajectories are based on specific artistic practices, but why should we dig potatoes if we can fly? Why should we watch moving images if they can be read as epistemic claims?

The Doctoral School of the Vilnius Academy of Arts comprises a vibrant community of 32 researchers in the arts and 32 researchers in art history & theory.  Established in 2010, the doctoral program in the arts aims to facilitate artistic research for artists, designers, architects, curators, art writers and other practitioners.

O P E N    C A L L

Location: Vilnius Academy of Arts and various locations in the city
Partners: Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theatre (LMTA), SODAS 2123

Dates and Deadlines
2023, November 9-11th, on site in Vilnius
Call for Contributions until June 11th, 2023
Notification of acceptance no later than 21st of June

Performance Intensive - Embodied Research in Spain, August 1-15, 2023

AADK Spain invites applications for a two-week performance intensive led by artist Raegan Truax. Working with the human body as a site of knowledge, creation, and connectivity, the performance intensive gives all participants the opportunity to be in nature, to quiet distractions, to alter their relationship to time and space, and to focus on their creative and artistic growth.

The Performance Intensive is carried out in Centro Negra, the current headquarters of AADK Spain. This special site combined with the unique spatiotemporal practices of our lead artist will offer participants the opportunity to work in ways that normal research environments and linear time schedules do not allow. The rhythms of our bodies, surrounded by rocky mountains, the Segura River, and citrus orchards will be listened to and explored. 

This call ends on May 30, 2023.

To apply, complete this Registration Form 

Duration of residency

15 days, August 1-15

Accommodation

Two accommodation options are available:

1) single room in a house or apartment, with a shared kitchen and bathroom

2) shared room in a shared house with a shared kitchen and bathroom

Disciplines, work equipment and assistance

Artists and researchers of any background and level of experience are eligible for this call. This call is also of special interest for those who wish to explore durational performance practices or alternative spatiotemporal methods. 

Fees and support

€1,250 if you opt for a single room in a house or apartment with a shared kitchen and bathroom

€975 if you opt for a shared room in a shared house with a shared kitchen and bathroom 

*letters of acceptance are provided for funding purposes

*The reservation fee of 50% of the full payment for the Performance Intensive must be received by the 30th of May to ensure your place and accommodations. The remaining fee can be paid in advance or upon arrival in August. 

What’s Included

14 days accommodation from August 1 – August 15.

10-day performance intensive led by Raegan Truax.

Artist work spaces & access to common areas and outdoor space.

Welcome Dinner.

Lunches on Workshop Days as well as coffee/tea & snacks.

Individual mentoring and studio visits with Raegan Truax.

Curatorial visit by AADK Spain.

Documentation of your work (photo & video).

contact: lab@aadk.es

Musical Topics and Performance Practice: A Symposium

June 1-2

Melbourne Conservatorium of Music – Ian Potter Southbank Centre

Faculty of Fine Arts and Music  – The University of Melbourne

This Symposium explores the interactions between musical topics and performance practice and the implications of topical awareness in an eloquent performance.

The keynote, in the form of a lecture-recital, will be delivered by Dr. Julian Hellaby, editor of the recently published Musical Topics and Musical Performance (Routledge, 2023), which will be launched at the symposium. In addition to papers on specific case studies by scholars and performers working on various musical genres and time periods, there will be plenary presentations given by A/Prof Janice Dickensheets and Prof Melanie Plesch, respectively.

The Symposium will also feature interactive Q&A sessions between presenters and participants.

To attend the full symposium, please register at:  https://tinyurl.com/mrx4h593

Further information can be found at https://www.topictheory.net/ as well as the Melbourne Conservatorium of Music Events website: https://events.unimelb.edu.au/event/30011-musical-topics-and-performance-practice-a

The Symposium organisers acknowledge the support of the Macgeorge Bequest.

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RECENT PUBLICATIONS

Blacks in Classical Music II

An International Bibliography and Resource Guide

by John Gray

People of African descent have been active in Western art music since its inception. Black performers were valued members of court orchestras starting in the early 1500s, and since the 18th century have been acclaimed as both performers and composers in locales ranging from Europe and the United States to sub-Saharan Africa, the Caribbean and Latin America. However, this rich legacy remains little known. John Gray’s monumental new work seeks to correct that oversight. A long-awaited sequel to his acclaimed Blacks in Classical Music it draws on more than three decades of research to survey the vast amount of print, digital and archival material that has emerged since the late 1980s. Fully annotated and cross-referenced it offers a comprehensive overview of all scholarly writings on the subject as well as a more selective representation of reportage from the mainstream and Black press.

This new edition is organized in three easy to navigate sections--General Works; Regional Studies; and Biographical and Critical Studies--allowing users to quickly access the information they need. It covers all forms of chamber and symphonic music as well as every variety of sacred and secular vocal music from art songs and concert spirituals to choral music and opera. The book’s large Regional Studies section chronicles developments in more than 30 American states and almost 60 foreign countries, while its even larger biographical section documents the lives and work of some 2000 artists, ensembles, and organizations. More than 600 of these are composers, along with an equally impressive number of singers, instrumentalists, librettists, music educators, and others. The work concludes with a detailed subject index that offers a key to all of the book's sections and another way to quickly pinpoint citations by musical idiom, instrument, topic, place, personal name, and composition.

Rhythm Changes: Jazz, Culture, Discourse

Stanbridge’s new book, Rhythm Changes: Jazz, Culture, Discourse, takes its title from the expression used by jazz musicians to refer to the ubiquitous chord changes of George and Ira Gershwin’s celebrated song, ‘I Got Rhythm’, from the 1930 Broadway musical Girl Crazy. The book offers a unique perspective on the history and development of jazz, addressing the music, its makers, and its social and cultural contexts, as well as the various discourses – especially those of academic analysis and journalistic criticism – that have served to influence the creation, interpretation, and reception of this distinctive cultural form.

Tackling a diverse series of issues, encompassing race, class, nationalism, authenticity, irony, parody, genre, musical meaning, romanticism, gender, art, commercialism, technology, sound recording, and musical form and style, the book adopts a radically contextualist viewpoint on artistic and cultural practices, suggesting new ways of thinking and talking about jazz and its history. In addition to his own provocative insights, Stanbridge challenges many established scholarly approaches in the field, whether those of analytical formalism, cultural elitism, critical idealism, or national and racial exceptionalism, providing a much-needed and long-overdue intervention in the current academic orthodoxies of Jazz Studies research.

Music & Letters 104.1

The latest issue (104.1) of Music & Letters is now available!

Articles:

• James Burke, ‘The Custodial History of the Sadler Partbooks (Oxford, Bodleian Library MSS Mus. e. 1–5)’

• Danielle Padley, ‘From Ancient to Modern: Identifying Anglicanism in an Anglo-Jewish Hymnal’

• Esther M. Morgan-Ellis, ‘Mediated Community and Participatory Blackface in Gillette Original Community Sing (CBS, 1936–1937)’

• Benjamin Court ‘Cardew’s Lessons: The Scratch Orchestra’s Amateur Democracy (1967-1973)

Review Article:

Karen Desmond, ‘The Indicative Mood: A Response to Margaret Bent’

Plus twenty book reviews… Happy reading!

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