Improvised Music in Toronto, 1960-1985 by David Lee a Thesis

Outside the Empire: Improvised Music in Toronto, 1960-1985 by David Lee A Thesis Presented to The University of Guelph In partial fulfilment of requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Literary/Theatre Studies in English Guelph, Ontario, Canada © David Lee, June, 2017 ABSTRACT OUTSIDE THE EMPIRE: IMPROVISED MUSIC IN TORONTO 1960-1985 David Lee Advisor: University of Guelph, 2017 Professor A. Heble Outside the Empire is an investigation of the improvised music community in Toronto from 1960 to 1985. Chapter One discusses how, beginning in the 1950s, the modernist sensibility of Toronto’s Painters Eleven collective inspired the formation of the Artists’ Jazz Band (AJB) in 1962. Chapter Two hinges upon bassist/pianist Stuart Broomer’s description of Toronto as “a mediated city,” and highlights the problems of sustaining an experimental musical career in English Canada’s music and media centre. Chapter Three discusses Coda Magazine. By framing jazz as a music of innovation and of social resistance, Coda introduced a level of critical discourse that sharply distinguished the magazine and its “scene” from both the typically conservative Toronto jazz community, and the apolitically modernist scene represented by CCMC and The Music Gallery. Chapter Four discusses how the improvising group CCMC founded the Music Gallery, and in doing so reified a specifically nationalized and racialized discourse around its origins. Chapter Five relates the author’s experience of learning to improvise to George Lipsitz’s definition of community learning via an “alternative academy,” to George E. Lewis’ theory of “sociodidacticism,” and to Tricia Rose’s writings on “flow, layering, and rupture.” Chapter Six positions the critical and musical work of Bill Smith between two different models of music history: one that treats musical development as community- based, and another that attributes innovations to a few exceptional individuals. Chapter Seven addresses women improvisers in the Toronto community’s early years. The author uses Michel de Certeau’s definitions of “spaces” versus “places,” and “strategy” versus “tactics.” Chapter Eight, the conclusion, suggests possible future areas for research into a Canadian improvising community in which the motivations of its subjects, the extent of its influence, and the history of its rich interdisciplinary infrastructure have been subject to distortion, appropriation, and erasure. Appendices include interviews with instrumentalists-composers Gayle Young and Diane Roblin, as well as an interview with the late saxophonist, and frequent AJB collaborator, Kenny Baldwin. There is also a discography of Toronto improvisation, and a list of Bill Smith Ensemble performances from the period under discussion. iv Acknowledgements A full-time Ph.D program is immersive: over several years, just about everything the student/candidate experiences will come to bear on the dissertation, sometimes in unexpected ways. I will do my best to acknowledge everyone who has been part of this process at one time or another. This work’s inception was itself something of an improvisation. At a chance meeting at a John Heward opening at Toronto’s MOCCA in 2010, Ajay Heble suggested I apply to the SETS Ph.D program. His support has been invaluable, not only as dissertation supervisor, but as IICSI director offering me writing, editorial, and musical work, and in person, as one of the rare scholars who is familiar with the music and the people I am writing about. For all of Ajay’s support, I didn’t get accepted into the PhD program in 2010, and would have given up on it except for another chance meeting – this time, with Daniel Fischlin at a Myra Melford concert in Guelph. Daniel encouraged me to re-apply, and put special effort into coaching me through a second, successful application. In the face of many other commitments, he has been a frequent source of help and advice. Frédérique Arroyas, a constant and consistent support to IISCI and the Guelph cultural scene in general, gave a number of especially useful responses to my first draft. I have certainly benefitted from the broad knowledge and experience of this unique committee. During my work with ICASP/IISCI during these years, I have continually depended on the close attention and professionalism of Rachel Collins, Justine Richardson, Elizabeth Jackson and Kim Thorne. Through the “Thinking Spaces” reading v group series, IICSI postdoctoral fellows have given me invaluable opportunities: Chris Tonelli, Mark Laver, Harald Kisiedu, Mauricio Martinez, and Loren Levesque. Fellow graduate students Paul Watkins and Kimber Sider have enabled me to take part in unique musical collaborations. In my course work, Martha Nandorfy’s knowledge of critical improvisation studies, and of North American indigenous culture, helped me connect my own background to a vision of pan-North American culture as a revolution in progress. Christine Bold welcomed my introduction of music into discussions about the American west, and the Western, and allowed me to write about the symphony orchestra as a colonizing force. Judith Thompson’s Devising course allowed me to conjure music, and write songs, for a collective play, and often forced me out of my comfort zone – a place that, like it or not, all scholars (and improvisors) should often visit. Smaro Kamboureli’s course introduced me to The Practice of Everyday Life; Michel de Certeau’s ideas from that book have usefully informed this dissertation. Paul Salmon has been an invaluable support throughout the program, supervising (with Daniel Fischlin) my Secondary Area Qualification, as well as offering friendship, advice and valuable teaching experience. Several semesters working on Theatre Journal as Ric Knowles’ Graduate Research Assistant made me think long and hard about the improvising musician in theatrical terms, as a performing body. Ric also lent me the use of his Massey Hall office space, as did Mark Lipton; Mark has also gone out of his way to offer important tactical (and practical) help, advice, and encouragement. Outside of U. of Guelph, Toronto get-togethers with Mark Miller, Stuart Broomer, Alan Stanbridge, Rob van der Bliek, Jack Chambers, Peter Danson, and Steve vi Wallace have allowed me to discuss some of these ideas outside the referential box of my own program. Miller, Stanbridge, and Broomer went out of their way to read and critique parts of this manuscript. Stuart Broomer contributed a number of emails and a valuable face-to-face interview, and Mark Miller offered research materials that would have been otherwise very hard to find. The dinner meetings themselves originally included the late John Norris – who was of central importance to the music documented here, and to my own participation in it – and Bill Smith, who above and beyond our decades of friendship, has been generous in offering information, memories, and feedback. I was able to develop some of the ideas in this dissertation, specifically about the Artists’ Jazz Band, in a series of talks during 2014: a Thinking Spaces session organized by Chris Tonelli at the Guelph Public Library, a keynote speech for the Somewhere There Creative Music Festival at the Tranzac in Toronto, and a presentation for the Rhythm Changes conference, organized by a committee chaired by Walter van de Leur, at the Amsterdam Conservatory. Other important assistance has been rendered by Daniel Barnes, Greg Gallagher, Al Mattes, Nobuo Kubota, Kate Rayner, Ben Portis, Catherine Morrissey, Donna McMurdo, and the staff of the York University Archives, and the Robert McLaughlin Gallery, as well as the staffs of the University of Guelph McLaughlin Library, and Mills Library at McMaster University. My thanks to Diane Roblin, Gayle Young, and the late Kenny Baldwin for allowing me to interview them. In recent years, writing usually has to take priority over music, but I believe in merging theory and practice. My thanks to everyone who has enabled me to keep playing the double bass during this time, especially Eric Stach, Terry Fraser, Catherine vii Morrissey, and their unique community in London, Ontario. During my first semester at Guelph, Jerrard Smith invited me to contribute music to a student play, and to private sessions, and he and Diana Smith put me up for the week that I had a nightly commitment onstage. Through Jerrard, I began a short-lived and much-missed collaboration with singer/songwriter Lauren Levesque, during Lauren’s tenure as IICSI postdoc. The Silence community organized by Daniel Fischlin, Ben Grossman, Gary Diggins, and others also gave me the chance to play music in Guelph on many occasions. In Hamilton, sessions with Gary Barwin, Chris Palmer, and Connor Bennett have kept me examining and re-examining hands-on improvising musical practice. Connor’s HAVN collective, as well as the work of Cem Zafir and Donna Akrey, has created a growing Hamilton improvising community. Arthur Bull, as well as being a great guitarist, is a great sounding board for ideas, and I have benefitted from my chances to talk, and play, with him and with Bob Vespaziani. I am also grateful for an Ontario Graduate Scholarship, the Edward Y. Morwick OGS Scholarship in English Literature. A two-year SSHRC Doctoral Fellowship enabled an enormous amount of work and travel. My thanks to the University of Guelph for the Stanley Saunders Scholarship for Music, which twice helped in making the duration of the SETS PhD program a most productive period for scholarship, writing, teaching, and creative work. For all

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