The 2021 AJIRN conference theme “Accessing Jazz and Improvised Music” invites participants to consider the networks, infrastructure, physical and ideological barriers, creative problems, privileges, and prejudices musicians and audiences routinely negotiate as they make their way to and through jazz and other improvised music. Inspired in part by the new platforms audiences and musicians have used to connect during the COVID-19 pandemic, this conference seeks to interrogate a spectrum of both physical and metaphorical barriers that have created space between artists, audiences, and researchers, and the bridges that have been built to span these gaps. We encourage participants to consider accessibility in broad terms and from various angles when grappling with the fundamental question of how jazz and other improvised music scenes might better cultivate cultures of inclusivity and respect. 

 

We welcome proposals for individual papers, panel discussions, and lecture-demonstrations that address this theme. Other topics may also be suitable for inclusion in the conference program. Proposals that fit with the sub-themes presented below are encouraged.

 

Accessing jazz and improvisation through technology

• Old, new, and repurposed technology as a resource for improvisation

• New media networks and online communities of practice

• Technologically assisted jazz/improvisation skills development

• Technologically assisted jazz/improvisation performance

• Apps, platforms and websites

• Developing as a musician in a global online context

• Utilising online environments as performance spaces

 

Physical access to jazz and improvisation

• Disability and music performance

• Venue development and sustainability

• The recording industry, recording as product, and the circulation of recordings

• Jazz and improvisation in our schools

 

Accessing creative space

• The influence of performance spaces on improvisation and composition

• Engaging with the natural environment as a performer and composer

• Practice based methodologies for developing artistry

• Communities of practice and compositional/improvisational language

• Arts infrastructure and artistic output

 

Privilege and prejudice in jazz and improvisation scenes

• Historical and contemporary barriers to inclusion

• Racialized and/or gendered frames in the analysis of jazz and improvisation

• Social and political dynamics in diasporic jazz communities

• Jazz institutions and their biases

 

Format

This conference will take place entirely online. All papers and lecture recitals need to be recorded in advance. Links to these recordings must be provided to the conference convenor by the deadline set out below. The Sydney Conservatorium of Music will stream conference sessions on June 5 and June 6, 2021. Zoom discussion rooms will be utilised for question and answer exchanges with conference presenters immediately following the streaming of their pre-recorded videos. Links to both the conference session streams and Zoom discussion rooms will be provided in the conference program.

  

Submission Process

We are accepting proposals for the following formats:

• 20-minute research papers (10-minute Q&A)

• 20-minute lecture recitals (10-minute Q&A)

• 10-minute research papers (5-minute Q&A) Note: We encourage post-graduate students in the early years of their candidature to nominate this format.

• Panel discussions (format can be negotiated with the Program Committee)

 

If you are interested in submitting a proposal for one of the formats outlined above, please submit as separate Word .doc or .docx files a 250-word abstract (with title) and a 100-word bio to christopher.coady@sydney.edu.au. We ask that you use the subject line “AJIRN 2021 Proposal” for this correspondence. Be sure to include in the body of your email a nominated presentation format (selected from the list above), a nominated sub-theme, and, if you are a postgraduate student, a note about the degree in which you are currently enrolled and your current candidature phase (new enrolment, mid-candidature, near completion etc.).

 

Proposals must be received by 7 February 2021.

Consideration of proposals will be completed by 6 March 2021.

 

If you are accepted to present, we ask that you pre-record your presentation and upload it to either Vimeo or YouTube. If using YouTube, we recommend uploading your file as an “unlisted” video. 

 

Links to pre-recorded videos must be submitted to scm.research@sydney.edu.au by 15 May 2021. We cannot guarantee space in the program for any videos submitted after this date.

 

Concert Proposals

This year AJIRN will be curating a collection of 15-minute pre-recorded concerts that we will stream as part of our conference program. This concert stream will allow participants to collectively watch, applaud, and comment on the musical work taking place across our diverse communities of practice. If you are interested in having a pre-recorded performance streamed as part of the conference program, please submit a Vimeo or YouTube link of your performance to the curation team (Associate Professor Rob Burke and Dr Louise Denson) here. Please include with your link as separate Word .doc or .docx files a 200-word contextualisation of your performance that speaks to its musical innovations and a 100-word bio.

 

Concert proposals must be received by 7 February 2021.

Consideration of proposals will be completed by 6 March 2021.

 

Program Committee

Dr Christopher Coady, University of Sydney (Conference Convenor and Program Committee Chair)

Associate Professor Robert Burke, Monash University (AJIRN President)

Professor Roger Dean, Western Sydney University

Dr Louise Denson, Griffith University

Dr Aleisha Ward, National Library of New Zealand

Dr Joseph Toltz, University of Sydney

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Key Note Speakers:

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Nichole Rustin-Paschal 

Nichole Rustin-Paschal earned her Ph.D. in American Studies from New York University and her J.D. from the University of Virginia. She is an Assistant Professor in Residence of Race and Ethnicity Studies at the Rhode Island School of Design where she teaches classes in African American cultural history, gender studies, and law. Her book, The Kind of Man I Am: Jazzmasculinity and the World of Charles Mingus Jr (Wesleyan 2017) is a genderended cultural history of jazz in the postwar period. Rustin-Paschal explores how Mingus's ideas about music, racial identity, and masculinity challenged jazz itself as a model of freedom, inclusion, creativity, and emotional expressivity. She is co-editor with Sherrie Tucker of Big Ears: Listening for Gender in Jazz Studies (Duke 2008), the ground-breaking anthology of work in jazz and gender studies. She is also co-editor of The Routledge Companion to Jazz Studies (Routledge 2019) with Tony Whyton and Nicholas Gebhardt, an anthology of cross-disciplinary and transnational studies in jazz. Her work has appeared in Critical Sociology, JazzDebates/JazzDebatten, Radical History Review, and the South Atlantic Quarterly among other publications. As a member of the Jazz Studies Collective, Nichole coordinates the Works-In-Progress group. She is also a proud board member of The Steel Yard, an industrial arts education and cultural center in Providence, RI

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Roger Dean

Bio: Roger Dean is a composer/improviser, and since 2007 a research professor in music cognition and computation at the MARCS Institute, Western Sydney University. His research folds into his creative work, currently particularly by means of deep learning computational models for music generation. He founded and directs the sound and intermedia creative ensemble austraLYSIS, which has appeared in 30 countries. He has performed as bassist, pianist, piano accompanist and laptop computer artist in many contexts, from the Academy of Ancient Music and the Australian Chamber Orchestra, to the London Sinfonietta, and from Graham Collier Music to duetting with Derek Bailey and Evan Parker, and performing with leading improvisers particularly from Europe and Australia. About 70 commercial recordings and numerous online digital intermedia pieces represent his creative work, and he has published more than 300 journal articles. Current research concerns improvisation and computational creativity, affect, roles of acoustic intensity and timbre, and rhythm generation and perception. With Hazel Smith and Will Luers, he won the 2018 international Robert Coover prize for a work of electronic literature. Currently austraLYSIS is preparing a duo album, of sound and intermedia, featuring diverse pairings: such as human/computer, human/environment, text/improviser, image/improviser.  Prior to 2007, he was a full professor of biochemistry in the UK, foundation CEO/Director of the Heart Research Institute, Sydney, researching on atherosclerosis, and then Vice-Chancellor and President of the University of Canberra.