Sound It Out Rachel Elliott

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.