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

“Beautiful images.” – Herman Leonard

 

Contact/portfolio

w@william-ellis.com

www.onelp.org

william-ellis.com

RC2016 Final Schedule

The fourth Rhythm Changes conference, Jazz Utopia, will take place at Birmingham City University in the United Kingdom from 14 to 17 April 2016. The deadline for paper submissions is 1 September 2015; this is a reminder so you don’t miss the deadline!!

Keynote speakers
Prof Ingrid Monson (Harvard University)
Prof Raymond MacDonald (University of Edinburgh)

We invite paper submissions for Jazz Utopia, a four-day multi-disciplinary conference that brings together leading researchers across the arts and humanities. The event will feature academic papers, panels and poster sessions alongside an exciting programme of concerts delivered in partnership with the Birmingham Conservatoire and Jazzlines.

Jazz has long been a subject for utopian longing and hopes for a better future; it has also been the focus of deeply engrained cultural fears, visions of suffering and dystopian fantasies. In its urgency and presence jazz is now here. As improvisational and transitory, jazz is nowhere. Utopia is nowhere and now here. Jazz is utopia. Or: jazz is utopian desire. Jazz Utopia seeks to critically explore how the idea of utopia has shaped, and continues to shape, debates about jazz.

We welcome papers that address the conference theme from multiple perspectives, including cultural studies, musicology, cultural theory, music analysis, jazz history, media studies, and practice-based research. Within the general theme of Jazz Utopia, we have identified three sub-themes. Please clearly identify which theme you are speaking to in your proposal.

Jazz identities: Claims have always been made for jazz as a certain utopian practice, in which jazz has made possible a musical-social space where different, usually marginal, identities are expressed and confirmed. At the multiracial club, bandstand, or dance-floor race and ethnicity are acknowledged, difference is championed or erased. Musicians have used jazz to step out of their class. The dialogic qualities and queer sounds alike of jazz offer opportunity for the expression of gender and sexuality. New thinking around disability and music reads jazz as a crip-space. Equally, consider the way in which freedom in improvisation has been understood as a liberating utopian practice. Even in its diasporic invention jazz comes from a kind of no-place (ou-topia = no place). In utopia, jazz is the effort to sound another world into being, the only condition of which is that it must be better. Has jazz really been that good?

Inside / outside: jazz and its others What does jazz mean to its community of insiders and those that approach it from outside? For those who are deeply involved with jazz, whether musicians, critics, scholars, or fans, the genre often provides a utopian space for creative encounters. By definition, the articulation of this space through performance, writing, research and consumption also creates a community of outsiders who may seek ways to engage with the jazz community or observe it from afar. This strand invites papers that address the relationships between jazz and its “others”, defined in relation to music making, criticism, scholarship or reception, whether these interactions are antagonistic or collaborative in tone.

Heritage and archiving: This strand focuses on the different ways in which heritage practices and archival work contribute to the reconfiguration of jazz as a utopian space. Through its commitment to alternative ways of living and being, jazz offers imaginative variations on themes of history and preservation. It creates communities of collectors and music lovers, who refigure jazz as nostalgia and escape, as well as renewal and return. We welcome papers that explore all aspects of archiving practice and cultural heritage and the opportunities and tensions that present themselves for scholars, institutions and practitioners in these fields.

Proposals are invited for:

• Individual papers(20 minutes) – up to 350 words.
• Themed paper sessions of three individual (20 minute) papers – 350 words per paper plus 350 words outlining the rationale for the session.
• Seventy-five minute sessions in innovative formats – up to 1000 words outlining the form and content of the sessions.

Please submit proposals (including a short biography and institutional affiliation) by email in a word document attachment to: jazzutopia@bcu.ac.uk

The deadline for proposals is 1st September 2015; outcomes will be communicated to authors by 1st October 2015. All paper submissions will be considered by the conference committee:

• Dr Christa Bruckner-Haring (University of Music & Performing Arts, Graz),
• Dr Nicholas Gebhardt (chair; BCU),
• Prof George McKay (University of East Anglia),
• Loes Rusch (University of Amsterdam/BCU),
• Dr Catherine Tackley (Open University),
• Prof Walter van de Leur (University of Amsterdam/Amsterdam Conservatory),
• Prof Tony Whyton (BCU/Birmingham Conservatoire).

The conference builds on the legacy of the Rhythm Changes research project. Rhythm Changes: Jazz Cultures and European Identities was funded as part of the Humanities in the European Research Area (HERA) Joint Research Programme, which ran from 2010-2013. The project team continues to develop networking opportunities and champion collaborative research into transnational jazz studies.

Updates on the conference and information about travel and accommodation will be available on this site over the next few months.