Heble has been involved with improvisation as a listener, musician, and coordinator since childhood.
“My father was a classical Indian musician and, of course, improvisation figures pretty prominently in classical Indian music. So I grew up listening to improvisation,” he explained.
His first watershed moment, however, was in his teens.
“Somewhere around high school I had this formative moment where I traded in all my Paul McCartney and the Wings albums,” recalled Heble. “I traded in my fifteen records and got one German import by the experimental rock group Cannes. That was kind of a life-changing experience.”
When Heble founded the Guelph Jazz Festival in 1994, it wasn’t as closely tied to improvised music as it is now.
Heble quickly added an academic conference to the bill, which made it the only festival in North America to do so. By directly connecting musicians with their audience and facilitating an event where musicians could discuss and present their ideas, the festival’s academic conference built an audience for experimental improvised music.The next major step for Heble was the publication of Critical Studies in Improvisation, an academic journal that provided an even larger platform for the field of inquiry.
“The festival led to the conference, the conference led to a journal, the journal led to these big grants, which has led to this amazing network of people now,” said Heble.
The grants allowed Heble and his team to found the IICSI, which boasts just under 60 researchers from 20 institutions across the globe. The IICSI is centered at the University of Guelph, but has partner sites at McGill, the University of British Columbia, Memorial University in Newfoundland, the University of Regina, and most recently the University of California at Santa Barbara.
In applying for the initial SSHRC Major Collaborative Research Initiatives (MCRI) grant, which was awarded in 2007, the original team of 35 researchers wanted to present how improvisation incorporated topics from law, to pedagogy, to the sphere of social understanding.
“The argument we were making in trying to develop this field was that historically and institutionally, improvisation has largely been disparaged,” said Heble. “It’s been looked at askance. It hadn’t been studied really very much at all, and in the context of pedagogies, what happens in the classroom, arts funding policies, improvisation really wasn’t being talked about or being valued. So, what would it mean to put improvisation on the table, changing the way it was being understood?”
Heble and the team sought to study improvisation not only as a musical practice, but as a social practice as well.
“What does that tell us about what it means to negotiate difference in the context of a community? What does it mean in terms of our ability to listen to what’s going on around us, to adapt to our surroundings, to adapt to unprecedented change?” said Heble. “It seemed to me that these issues were at the heart of trying to understand what it might mean for us to get along in a globalized world.”
The IICSI studies both musical and theatrical improvisation, although Dr. Heble’s extensive training falls into the former category. The institute partners with Empty Space Theatre troupe in Kitchener-Waterloo for improvisatory theatrical work.
Along with Empty Space, the institute has several other partnerships in the region, including with KidsAbility, a Guelph-based organization that runs programs for children with physical or developmental disabilities. The partnership involves a series of workshops on improvisation, which often culminate in public performances, including at the Guelph Jazz Festival.
“Those performances are always absolutely amazing highlights of the festival for many people,” said Heble. “We hear from kids who participate in these events that they’re listening differently to the people around them and reacting differently. They have a self-confidence that they never had before. Or that they’re now actually enrolling in music lessons as a result of these projects. As part of our 10-year celebration of our partnership with KidsAbility, we’re actually in the process of planning a retrospective show which will take place at the 2017 Guelph Jazz Festival. We will feature stories of impact from the KidsAbility project. We’re hoping to interview some of the kids, maybe do some digital storytelling […] and bring back some of the alumni youth from the program who have now moved on to other things.”
Along with community partnerships, there is also academic potential as the institute continues to grow. Most of this new potential derives from years of contributing to the improvisation scene through conferences, concerts, and other events.
“We’re in the midst of trying to develop an interdisciplinary, inter-institutional graduate program in improvisation studies,” said Heble.
“There’s a lot of excitement. A lot has happened that has enabled the building of the field and the building of a real sense of community around this artistic practice.”
The graduate program isn’t the only major project in the works.
“We submitted a project to the Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI) grant in the hopes of establishing a new performing arts facility here on the University of Guelph campus.”
If successful, the result would be a performing arts research facility equipped with telematics to allow performances across geographical space.
Heble also has two books in the works. Classroom Action, featuring writing from Heble’s former students, is slated to be published this April. He is also co-authoring a book with U of G alumnus Jesse Stewart about improvisation and pedagogy.
Heble accredits the Impact Award to a team that began work on improvisation long before their first grant approval.
“The Impact Award is in my name, but it’s really an award that celebrates the work of the whole team. It’s recognition for amazing work that a team of people have been doing.”
Heble, for all his acclaim, remains humble.
“I would certainly want to acknowledge, not only the members of the research team, but my amazing staff, because none of this would have been possible without my staff, in particular Justine Richardson, Elizabeth Jackson, and Rachel Collins.”
Photo by Claire Wilcox/The Ontarion.