We are pleased to announce that the Jazz Utopia conference supper will be hosted by Bar Utopia (where else?) on Church Street, Birmingham city centre on Saturday the 16th of April. Buses will take delegates from outside BCU’s city centre campus to the restaurant at 17.15. At 19.15 we will head across to the nearby Birmingham Conservatoire for Mike Fletcher’s Jazz Orchestra performance (tickets included in conference delegate pack). Dietary requirements have already been considered, with vegan, vegetarian and gluten free options and all dishes clearly labelled for allergies. Drinks can be bought at the bar and are not included in the Eventbrite price.
Please register your interest by emailing jazzutopia@bcu.ac.uk
Payments (for food only) should be made before the event, via the Eventbrite link here.
Rhythm Changes, Jazz Utopia is pleased to announce our Keynote Speakers, to be hosted at Birmingham City University for the fourth Rhythm Changes conference:
Ingrid Monson – Jazz Utopias Then and Now
Friday 15th April
Ingrid Monson is Quincy Jones Professor of African American music at Harvard University. She is the author of Freedom Sounds: Civil Rights Call Out to Jazz and Africa (Oxford University Press, 2007), winner of the Woody Guthrie Award of the International Association for the Study of Popular Music; Saying Something: Jazz Improvisation and Interaction (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996) winner of the Irving Lowens Book Award of the Society for American Music; and an edited a volume entitled the African Diaspora: A Musical Perspective (Garland/Routledge 2000). She has been a Guggenheim Fellow, served as chair of the Department of Music, and Interim Dean of the Arts and Humanities at Harvard. She served as an expert witness for the Marvin Gaye family in the Blurred Lines copyright infringement case in 2015. She is completing a new book called Kenedougou Visions, about Malian balafonist Neba Solo and is planning another book on copyright and African American music.
Raymond MacDonald – Utopia, Nirvana or Valhalla: Improvisation and all that jazz
Saturday 16th April
Raymond MacDonald is Professor of Music Psychology and Improvisation and Head of The Reid school of Music at Edinburgh University. After completing his PhD in Psychology at the University of Glasgow, investigating therapeutic applications of music, he worked as Artistic Director for a music company, Sounds of Progress, specializing in working with people who have special needs. He has published over 70 papers, was editor of the Journal Psychology of Music between 2006-2012 and has coedited five texts: Musical Identities (2002), Musical Communication (2005), Music Health and Wellbeing (2012), Musical Imaginations (2012) and the Handbook of Music Identities (in press). As a saxophonist and composer his work is informed by a view of improvisation as a social, collaborative and uniquely creative process that provides opportunities to develop new ways of working musically. Collaborating with musicians such as Evan Parker, David Byrne, Jim O’Rourke and Marilyn Crispell, he has released over 50 CDs and toured and broadcast worldwide. He has produced music for film, television, theatre and art installations and is a founder member of Glasgow Improvisers Orchestra. He has a particular interest in cross-disciplinary collaboration and has extensive experience of working with artists and filmmakers.
The One LP Project: Rhythm Changes Jazz Utopia Conference 2016
Parkside Building, Birmingham City University
14th-17th April 2016
Outline
One LP is a unique and critically acclaimed portraiture photography project that explores the inspirational qualities of jazz recordings and the impact that they have on people’s lives. Each artist portrait features the subject holding a recording that is of fundamental importance to them. The photograph is accompanied by a short interview that explores the meaning and significance of the selected album.
Concept and development
One LP is a project that commenced in 2010 as a response to conversations with musicians about their relationship with the music of other artists heard via recordings – and in particular the albums that had profoundly moved them. As a conversation is of course transient – committed only to memory – I sought a format to document my interactions with artists. The One LP series is the result – something that reveals the matrix of jazz. Perhaps more mellifluously, a journey into another’s soul: the album that each person selects is a part of them: their past, present and future.
William Ellis – February 2016
“British photographer William Ellis is perhaps best known for his impeccable photos of jazz musicians. Truly cool interactive exhibits like this that combine multiple art forms don’t come around often.” Time Out New York
The premiere One LP exhibition was held in New York at the ARChive of Contemporary Music in 2014 and subsequently shown in Los Angeles during the Britweek arts program. The project – conceived in the jazz world has been extended and now includes around 200 people in manifold occupations in the creative milieu – artists, academics, musicians, broadcasters, writers and photographers.
The exhibition at Birmingham City University is the most comprehensive to date and reflects the position of jazz as the most diverse of musical genres. The artists featured in the exhibition range from innovators whose provenance reaches back to the genre’s birth through to leading and emergent contemporary artists. This pantheon includes figures such as Al Jarreau, Annie Ross, Sheila Jordan, Jon Hendricks, Gregory Porter, Benny Golson, Jimmy Heath, Joe Lovano, Kenny Burrell, Mike Stern, Ron Carter, Marcus Miller, Lonnie Liston Smith, Robert Glasper, Michael League, Soweto Kinch, Tomasz Stanko and Christian Scott. Whilst One LP is a mature and rapidly-growing project, William is constantly seeking opportunities for collaboration to further develop the series, and welcomes proposals and dialogue re: subjects and directions.
About
William Ellis was born in Liverpool in 1957, developing his distinctive style encompassing portrait, performance and still life images of musical instrument via study and appreciation of the work of a wide range of artists and fellow photographers. His breakthrough into jazz came with the opportunity to photograph Miles Davis in 1989. William has since worked with many of the world’s leading musicians. William’s work is exhibited extensively at international level: it is held in private collections worldwide and those of major institutions including the National Portrait Gallery London, the ARChive of Contemporary Music in New York and the American Jazz Museum in Kansas City MO.
William’s photographs have been used in the JAM (Jazz Appreciation Month) Outreach program in the United States initiated by the Smithsonian Institution. They also appear regularly in print/online publications, and are used by record companies in artist promotion. William has a regular column on One LP in Allaboutjazz.com
