Listening Legacy

In 2020, the Creative Music Workshop (CMW) turned 25 years old. However, we were not able to celebrate this milestone due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Then in July of 2021 Jerry Granelli, a founder and longtime director of the CMW, passed away at age 80. An influential mentor to many artists, Jerry is survived by a community of musicians, artists, and educators that he trained in his style of improvisation. Listening Legacy is a celebration of 25 years of the CMW and the artistic philosophies that Jerry left to his community.

Listening Legacy is a community art project, centred around the connection between memory and legacy. The project consists of two parts.

Part one will be completed before Nocturne. Past and present CMW community members will submit recordings of themselves delivering one of Jerry’s favourite lessons as they remember it. This lesson is called The Listening Exercise and is foundational to the CMW method. The Listening Exercise is a grounding practice that is meant to focus awareness. Submitted recordings will be edited, dissected into the different steps of the exercise, and then collected and added to a sound art piece programmed in MAX/msp. MAX/msp is a graphic programming language for music and multimedia that allows creatives to develop programs called patches. This MAX/msp patch will play sections of community submitted recordings in step-by-step order to give the directions of the exercise, but a different community member will tell each section. The community member will be chosen at random by the program. Thus, while the basic form remains the same, the piece will be different each time. The process reflects the way legacy is carried forward: everyone has their own interpretation of it and even though it is unique to an individual, it also remains a shared experience.

Part two takes place during Nocturne in the Saint George’s Round Church Community Hall, where we currently host our weekly sessions. Current and past community members will join the local CMW faculty to perform with the sound art piece. The piece will be improvised but will adhere to the same form. Each performance will take place on the hour and will last between 30 to 45 minutes, giving time afterwards for discussion and community gathering. We will transform the space into a welcoming place to gather and reflect, with plants and cushions, as well as provide art supplies for attendees to draw or journal while they listen.