LECTURES

The Department of Music at Northeastern University will present a one-day symposium and concert event entitled “Improvisation in Cross-Cultural Perspectives” on Friday, March 18, 2011 starting at 9:00 am. All events will be held in the Fenway Center, 77 St. Stephen Street, Boston, on the campus of Northeastern University. Admission is free. For more information, contact Arthur Rishi at (617) 373-2671.

In recent years improvisation has been recognized as central to many musical practices in the world. Often providing a setting for interaction that promotes an “embodied collective learning,” improvisation has come to be viewed as fostering socialization, enculturation, cultural formation, and community development. The goal of this one-day symposium is to engage scholars, performers, and students in a discourse that includes a wide range of issues and topics on improvisation. The symposium intends to spotlight the contributions of ethnomusicology to the study of improvisation, and highlight the role of ethnography in understanding this musical practice in cross-cultural perspectives.

Participants will include keynote speaker Stephen Blum (CUNY Graduate Center), Leonard Brown (Northeastern University), Rebecca Cline (Berklee College of Music), Virginia Danielson (Harvard University), Brita Heimarck (Boston University), Richard Jankowsky (Tufts University), Robert Labaree (New England Conservatory of Music), composer and sound artist Miya Masaoka, George Ruckert (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), and Julie Strand (Northeastern University). The symposium will culminate with a performance by the Ozan Aksoy Trio and music of Anatolia, at 7:00 pm.