What the World Needs Now is Jazz

The worldwide lockdown caused by the COVID-19 pandemic initiated an economic crisis, especially in the performing arts world. With all events cancelled for many months and limited options to return to live performance in the future, the arts community had to respond quickly. The jazz model, specifically improvisational training, has been discussed frequently in the entrepreneurship literature as an important method for making decisions in uncertain situations. Furthermore, the principle of Effectual Entrepreneurship defined as engaging in a continuous cycle of ideation and experimentation towards creating solutions from available means and techniques, is usually associated with a growth mindset fostered by training in improvisational techniques. Hence, this article documents and discusses the hypothesis that directions and activities pursued by jazz musicians who train their improvisational capacities on a regular basis can provide a glimpse of the evolving new model. Data collected from a survey, published literature, and several in-depth interviews and conclusions point towards a hybrid model of new technologies and modes of interaction combined with the need to preserve human engagement. Furthermore, the fragility of the current performing arts system calls for structural redesign and new focus on local communities.

Book review Simon Rose (2017) The Lived Experience of Improvisation: in music, learning and life. Bristol UK: Intellect Press

A review of Simon Rose's book 'The Lived Experience of Improvisation'

Listening through Webs for/of Creole Improvisation

Our paper reflects on our experience with Weaving Music II—a web performance space we built with fifteen artists working across different disciplines. The website and our essay attempt to create alternatives to the “at-the-same-timeness” of streaming technologies as well as the forms of listening defined by data capitalism and corporate platforms like Google and YouTube. At the heart of the alternative practices we propose is an embrace of what we see as the creolizing potentiality of the Web and of listening. To unpack these potentialities, the essay and artwork critically reflect on listening that occurs through Afrofuturistic modes of engagement with technology, space and time. We consider the historical origins of Web improvisations, our approach to collaboration using Weaving Music II, and theories of information that move beyond the need for predefined codes of understanding.

Free Jazz Communism [Book Review]

This review addresses the book 'Free Jazz Communism' (Rab Rab Press), a volume concerning a performance at the 1962 World Youth Festival in Helsinki by the Archie Shepp-Bill Dixon group. The book argues that this hitherto neglected event is a central moment for studies of the relation between jazz and politics during the Cold War Era, combining source texts, interviews, and polemical interventions to make its case. Our review fills in some of the details about the event, and Shepp's political activity during the early 1960s, which are not uncovered in the book. The first half of the review concentrates on our research into the festival, and the second half turns more closely to the book itself, as well as to Shepp's involvement with political causes during this time. Our intention is to use the book as an occasion to stage original research, as well as to analyse the contributions and shortcomings of the book itself.

Time Folding • Folding Time

Lisa Cay Miller is a pianist/composer/improviser and Artistic Director of the NOW Society. In this piece, she offers a poetic description of the technological challenges associated with a large-scale sequential improvisation project in which thirty-six musicians and two sound engineers collaborated with one another to produce a total of thirty-eight videos of improvised musical performances.

The Creative Commons is Starving

Improvising drummer and community organizer Joe Sorbara advocates for the implementation of a Universal Basic Income (UBI) that will “provide everyone with the space to hear and recognise a calling, and . . . ensure that we all have the capacity and support to answer the call.”