Ellen Waterman
Improvising across difference: Fostering inclusive and sustainable music communities
What is the potential for musical improvisation to foster inclusive and sustainable music communities? How can improvisation be used to honour, negotiate, and bridge differences among participants and with what social effects? Drawing on two multi-year community-engaged research-creation projects in Canada, this talk explores the potential and challenges of improvising across difference. Research-creation is the Canadian term for what is often called artistic research or practice-based research in other countries. Community-engaged research-creation is a novel methodology developed at the Research Centre for Music, Sound, and Society in Canada through several pilot projects since 2021. Adding community-engagement to research-creation is a strategy aimed at decentering a focus on professional expertise and artistic and scholarly products by foregrounding the relationships among co-creative processes and their social/cultural effects.Examples will be drawn from three projects: co-creation of a signed music film by hearing researchers and Deaf musicians; networked improvisation between professional orchestra players, special music educators, and adults with profound disabilities; and collaboration among professional and amateur singers from the 2SLGBTQIA+ community in response to a visual art exhibition.
Biography
Ellen Waterman (she/her) holds the Helmut Kallmann Chair for Music in Canada and is a Professor in the School for Studies in Art and Culture at Carleton University. Her interdisciplinary research in music, sound, and listening studies engages with improvisation, performance ecologies, community-engaged research-creation methodologies, and social change. Waterman is also active as a flutist/vocalist specializing in creative improvisation, a practice that informs her artistic research. Her instructional score Bodily Listening in Place(2022), commissioned by New Adventures in Sound Art, explores an expanded concept of listening across different sensory modalities. A core member of the International Institute for Critical Studies in Improvisation, Waterman’s books include Negotiated Moments: Improvisation, Sound, and Subjectivity (Duke 2016). She is also a member of the editorial collective for the open access book Improvising Across Abilities: Pauline Oliveros and the Adaptive Use Musical Instrument (Music and Social Justice Series, Michigan 2023). In 2021 Waterman founded the Research Centre for Music, Sound, and Society in Canada, dedicated to exploring the complex and diverse roles that music and sonic arts play in shaping Canadian society.
