Sounds Provocative Researcher Thomas Silvani interviews Joe Sorbara, board member of AIMToronto:
1. This performance was part of the Leftover Daylight Series. Can you tell me about this series and how it fits into other AIMToronto events/activities?
Leftover Daylight is a weekly concert series. I suppose that I'm its 'executive producer' or some such thing, since I'm kind of responsible for the minutiae of the thing; but Geordie Haley, Rob Piilonen, Colin Fisher and I each book one Friday night of music per month at the Arraymusic Studio. There are three sets per night. The first two are usually an ad hoc improvising ensemble and an existing band and the third set is booked by a different guest curator each month.
Ken Aldcroft and I started the series in November 2003, so it's been going on for a while and I'm quite proud that we've been able to keep it going with consistency over the course of a few years. There have been some changes - Ken left to run the NOW Series a while back, for example - but most have been positive changes, such as moving from a bi-weekly to a weekly presentation.
To answer the AIMToronto related part of your question, though, Leftover Daylight both is and isn't an 'AIMToronto event/activity'. When we started AIMToronto, one of the main ideas was to create an umbrella of sorts under which all of the tiny pockets of creative, improvising musicians in and around Toronto could organise. The problem was, make that 'is', that it takes consistency, people doing something in one place for an extended period of time, to build an audience and a sense of community. We've managed to do this with Leftover Daylight, but there's a reason that we present at the Arraymusic Studio despite its being a little out of the way. Quite simply, it's because there's no bar owner to kick us out when she doesn't sell enough beer one night because only 2 people showed up to hear the music. This has happened to all of us at one point or another and it's a reality that will continue to happen for as long as the realms of art and finance are opposed to to one another: forever. Places like the Arraymusic Studio, the TRANZAC, and the NOW Lounge have been very good to creative music-makers in Toronto, but these places are certainly exceptional. So this 'umbrella' that AIMToronto is meant to be can hopefully provide the consistency that is so hard to maintain otherwise. I do something here, you do something there, she does something here sometimes and over there at other times, those guys do there thing here, etc. But it's all done under the umbrella of AIMToronto so that audiences are shared between scenes, the scenes themselves become more integrated and diverse, and the media has something bigger and more consistent to pay attention to.
Anyway, Leftover Daylight is actually Geordie, Rob, Colin and I doing our thing under that umbrella. Rob and I happen to sit on the board of AIMToronto, but Leftover Daylight is only an AIMToronto event in the way that CoexisDance, the Sandbox, the NOW Series, MUSICinGALLERIES, Michelangelo Iaffaldano's large ensemble workshops, and other member-driven initiatives are.
2. From reading the AIMToronto roundtable discussion, I get the sense that the New Orchestra Workshop (NOW) served an inspirational role in the founding of AIMToronto. Can you talk about the importance of NOW as a model organization for AIMToronto? How does the vision of AIMToronto differ from that of NOW?
The Interface Series, which is the event that the actual board of AIMToronto presents, was started by Ken Aldcroft and I before there was an AIMToronto. The idea behind the series is to feature visiting improvising musicians playing with members of the local improvised music community. To quote the website, "the goal is to promote awareness and interaction. Through these events, visiting musicians become intimately aware of what is going on in Toronto by actually interacting with the local scene; local improvisers are presented with an opportunity to learn about, learn from, and interact with the visitor; Toronto audiences are able to hear and see local improvising musicians make music with their favourite improvisers from outside the city." Anyway, while putting away chairs and cleaning up after the final night of our Ron Samworth Interface event in April 2004, we all but created AIMToronto. Rob Clutton, Nick Fraser, Ken Aldcroft and I just happened to be the last few people in the room with Ron, who was impressed with the event he'd just taken part in, impressed with the people he'd made music with, and impressed by the fact that some creative musicians in Toronto were organizing something for themselves. He was very encouraging and and supportive. Over the course of a couple of hours he proved that we were already basically doing it, we just needed a name, some paper work, an official board, all of that.
In terms of the New Orchestra Workshop being a model for AIMToronto, NOW is an ensemble so their efforts are focused on a relatively small and specific group of players in Vancouver. We're very different in terms of what we're trying to do that way. When it comes down to it, though, both are examples of creative, Canadian musicians building something for themselves; organising on their own behalf in an effort to make conditions better for making their art and presenting it to the public.
3. AIMToronto now seems to be a model for other collectives in Canada, most notably AIMCalgary, to emulate. Your outreach is significant and goes beyond your own community: in my experience living in Guelph, there have been a number of opportunities to play and listen to improvised music associated in someway with AIMToronto; you hosted KWIC on this evening; and, AIMToronto musicians played in Calgary with AIMCalgary members in January, 2007. While the benefits from these outreach activities are numerous and noted in your mandate, “This will help to find and educate new, interested listeners and promote local artists making creative music to the community at large,” (myspace.com/aimtoronto) there must be challenges involved working with musicians of varying musical backgrounds and abilities. Have you, as a musician, found other reasons (other than those outlined in the mandate) to continue to pursue an outreach direction?
First of all, I don't consider making music with Kathryn Ladano or Ted Harms or yourself to be "outreach". Outreach is opening a rehearsal up to the general public in the hope that people might be interested in what's going on and come out to learn a little bit about the inner workings of the music. Outreach is going in to a school and working with young people who need to be made aware of improvisation as a valuable process for music-making. These are things that I really love doing. I had the pleasure of giving some workshops in elementary schools on the east coast during a recent tour. We managed to almost trick some kids into making music together through improvisation using John Stevens' Search and Reflect exercises. I was over the moon listening to this music and witnessing all of the light bulbs coming on above these people's heads when they started to turn on the all of the possibilities inherent in what they were doing. Wonderful. So outreach and education make me happy, and that's the best reason to do something, I think.
And now the first half of your question... As soon as AIMToronto started to do things, people from outside the actual city started to get involved, including a number of wonderful musicians living and making music in Guelph and in Kitchener-Waterloo. Kathryn Ladano became a member of AIMToronto while living here and I assume that our activities in Toronto were a part of what brought the KWIC about when she moved to K.W. AIMCalgary started the same way. Aaron Leany became a member while he was living here. When he moved back home to Calgary he saw a need and got busy doing what he could do to fill it. Again: creative musicians building something for themselves. It doesn't take very long to learn that no one else is going to do it for us, you know? Because it's not financially viable from day one - it takes some investment. So you either do it yourself or try to resign yourself to making solo music in your living room that no one else ever hears - and what kind of existence is that? We have so many examples of creative people who took destructive, often fatal, measures to numb the pain that comes from doing what you do when no one is looking, listening, offering support. I just don't want to live that life and I've been incredibly lucky to have found so many talented people who don't want that either. Thanks for being a part of that, Thomas, thanks for your energy and your support and for your music.
Sounds Provocative Researcher Thomas Silvani interviews Kathryn Ladano, co-founder of KW Improvising Collective:
1. The KW Improvising Collective (KWIC) was founded in 2006 by yourself and Ted Harms. How has the response been in the weekly open rehearsals that KWIC holds? What other activities is KWIC planning?
In the relatively short period of time that KWIC has been holding open rehearsals we've found that there has been a great deal of interest and support in the community. We've been holding our open rehearsals for about a year and a half now, and since then word has been spreading and more and more people seem to come out all the time. I think part of the reason for this is because there seems to be a natural interest in new and experimental music in the K-W area as can be seen with the success of the Open Ears Festival and NUMUS concert series. In addition, we hold our rehearsals in the music building at Wilfrid Laurier University, so naturally we have picked up a lot of interest from both the music students and the music faculty. KWIC has also organized other events beyond the open rehearsals and we hope to continue to do so. In June 2007 we launched our "Consumables Concert Series" with our innagural concert at the UW Grad House, and we also have
started to host workshops on improvisation. Our first workshop took place in October 2007 and was hosted by British percussionist Eddie Prevost, and our most recent workshop took place in February 2008 and was hosted by Montreal-based clarinetist, Lori Freedman. We hope to continue with the concerts, workshops, and open rehearsals and expand KWIC's presence in the years to come.
2. There seems to be a growing scene in collective music making with collectives emerging in Kitchener-Waterloo, Guelph (Guelph Creative Music Collective), and Calgary (AIMCalgary) within the last couple of years. One gets a sense from AIMCalgary’s blog that a lack of participation has been a significant issue. The Guelph Creative Music Collective still has a number of challenges to work through such as finding rehearsal space and performance venues. What have been the challenges so far in starting and sustaining KWIC?
So far I think KWIC's biggest challenge has been in finding a steady base of musicians willing to come out to the open rehearsals. At the beginning it would often just be Ted and myself, but over time we were able to pick up more people. At times it has been frustrating because we would get a new member who would come out once and then we would never see that person again. The other big challenge we've had is in our concerts. Although we consider the three concerts we've hosted so far to have been successful, there is a lot of difficulty in finding suitable venues in the KW area for these shows. We've also found it challenging to create enough awareness of our shows to get decent sized crowds coming out for them. We have however been fortunate in that we received funding from the Region of Waterloo Arts Fund to help with our projects and to help build KWIC. Without this funding, we wouldn't have been able to host any of the workshops, and we also
wouldn't have been able to pay any of the musicians who performed in our concerts. We hope that we'll receive more funding for next year, but it's always an uncertainty and something you can't really count on. If we don't get further funding, we will still keep KWIC going, but we might have to scale things back a bit.
3. This performance features KWIC members improvising with AIMToronto members in an AIMToronto concert series, Leftover Daylight. How did this evening with AIMToronto come about and what was the experience like for KWIC as a collective?
This idea first came about back in December of 2006 when we were approached by AIMToronto about guest curating the Leftover Daylight series for the month of February, 2007. This initial plan fell through due to timing and transportation issues, so we instead opted to do a joint night of improv featuring both KWIC and AIMToronto members. Both Ted and I have played in Leftover Daylight concerts in the past and I am also a member of AIMToronto, so we thought this would be a great (and fun) opportunity for KWIC and its musicians. I think all of us found this to be a really great experience because in the open rehearsals, you tend to play with a lot of the same people every week and you often have a pretty good idea of what to expect. In the company night with AIMToronto, we were all playing with different mixes of people (many of whom we'd never played with before and had never even met before), so I think it always kept us on our toes and always kept the ideas fresh. I think it
was particularly beneficial for our members that hadn't had much (if any) improv experience outside of KWIC. Hopefully we can put another concert like this together again.
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