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ShortCuts

Shortcuts 5.4

Re-Listening to Improvisation in the Archives

As April is the month of poetry, we’ve taken a pause in this year’s ShortCuts Live conversations to listen back to one of the first episodes of ShortCuts, “ShortCuts 1.2 / Audio of the Month: Improvising at a Poetry Reading.”

In the archival clip played in this episode, we hear Maxine Gadd pausing during a reading with Andreas Schroeder. She asks the host Richard Sommer if he would like to improvise with her for the poem, “Shore Animals.”

Listening now, we can ask: what does it feel like for archival listeners to encounter a moment of improvisation? It is a truly memorable moment of listening and worth returning to now in this fifth season of ShortCuts.

EPISODE NOTES

A fresh take on sounds from the past, ShortCuts is a monthly feature on The SpokenWeb Podcast feed. Stay tuned for monthly episodes of ShortCuts on alternate fortnights (that’s every second week) following the monthly SpokenWeb podcast episode. If you are a SpokenWeb RA with an archival clip to feature on ShortCuts, do write to us at spokenwebpodcast@gmail.com with your pitch.

Host and Series Producer: Katherine McLeod

Supervising Producer: Maia Harris

Sound Design: James Healey

Transcription: Yara Ajeeb

ARCHIVAL AUDIO

Listen to the entire recording of Maxine Gadd reading at Sir George Williams University (now Concordia University) here.

00:00	Katherine McLeod	Welcome to ShortCuts.
00:04	Theme music	[Electronic music plays]
00:07	Katherine McLeod	This month, it is April, the month of poetry, and I thought that we’d take a pause in this season’s ShortCuts Live conversations to listen back to an early episode of ShortCuts – to hear an early version of ShortCuts: thinking about what means to be an archival listener.
00:28	Katherine McLeod	By the way, this episode is such an early episode of ShortCuts that I hadn’t even come up with the name “ShortCuts” yet.
		You’ll hear me refer to it at one point as “Audio of the Month,” that was what I was calling it in that first season.
00:43	Theme music	[Theme music continues]
00:45	Katherine McLeod	What was the archival clip of this episode? Well, you’ll hear Maxine Gadd pausing during a reading with Andreas Schroeder to ask–
00:55	Maxine Gadd, Audio Recording	Do you want to try improvising?–
00:58	Katherine McLeod	After reading for about 45 minutes, Maxine Gad invited the host of the evening, Richard Sommer, to improvise on the flute.
01:05	Recording	I gotta find it first –
01:09	Katherine McLeod	Listening now, we can ask, what does it feel like for archival listeners to encounter a moment of improvisation? Improvisation is so rooted in the experience of being there. So, what does it feel like to hear improvisation again? To hear it in the archives and even in this replaying?
01:31	Katherine McLeod	Well, considering these questions, we can also listen to the extent to which we can hear the audience’s excitement for this spontaneous moment amid the reading and Gadd’s invitation for the flute to listen.
01:45	Sound Effect	[Sound of pressing play on a tape player]
01:50	Katherine McLeod	Let’s listen now together to Shortcuts 1.2,
		Audio of the Month: “Improvising at a poetry reading.”
02:05	Maxine Gadd, Audio Recording	Yeah. It’s just going to be some sounds [inaudible].
02:10	Katherine McLeod [from ShortCuts 1.2]	In this “Audio of the Month,” we’re travelling back to February 1972, when poets Maxine Gad and Andreas Schroeder read in Montreal. They read at Sir George Williams University, or what is now Concordia.
		They read on February 18th in the Hall Building in room H651. The reading started at 9 pm.
		Yes, readings started late and went on for a long time. After reading for about 45 minutes, Maxine Gad invited the host of the evening, Richard Sommer, to improvise on the flute. He improvised along with her, reading the poem Shore Animals. Before starting to improvise, we can hear a negotiation between Gad and Sommer about what to read and how to perform together. A process that is its own audible improvisation.
03:02	Maxine Gadd, Audio Recording	Oh, here it is.
		Now, how it goes, you have to keep quiet until…
		[Random Flute Notes]
		See now, [laughs] he’s never done this one before.
03:15	Richard Sommer, Audio Recording	What, what, yeah, what do you want me to do then?
03:18	Maxine Gadd, Audio Recording	Okay, this is called “Shore Animals.”
		It’s a speech piece with a flute, and the flute has to listen. And it can speak, too.
03:30	Katherine McLeod [from ShortCuts 1.2]	The audio clip that you’ll hear includes the first two minutes of a six-minute improvisation. Their improvisation is a singular moment when an audience member, in this case Richard Sommer, formally performs in the Sir George Williams poetry series. At the same time, this recording reminds listeners that the audience is always present, ready to improvise, interject, and even interrupt. And that the audience is also what we are listening to as archival listeners.
04:03	Maxine Gadd, Audio Recording	The flute, I think it’s over there.
		For fun.
		The same message?
		I’m asking; Richard’s going to make some noise with my flute.
04:19	Richard Sommer, Audio Recording	I’ll make some noise if you give me a microphone.
04:21	Maxine Gadd, Audio Recording	Okay. Which one you want? Let’s share it. Is–
04:25	Richard Sommer, Audio Recording	It doesn’t make any difference.
04:26	Maxine Gadd, Audio Recording	It goes with the poem [inaudible].
04:28	Richard Sommer, Audio Recording	How’d you do that?
04:29	Maxine Gadd, Audio Recording	What?
04:31	Richard Sommer, Audio Recording	This, this knot.
04:32	Maxine Gadd, Audio Recording	I’ve tied myself in there.
04:32	Richard Sommer, Audio Recording	Here we go.
04:33	Maxine Gadd, Audio Recording	I don’t know where I can find it—[Long pause] pieces, pieces. Oh, here it is.
		Now, how it goes. You have to keep quiet until… [Random Flute Notes] See, now… [Laugh] He’s never done this one before.
05:04	Richard Sommer, Audio Recording	What, what, yeah, what do you want me to do then?
05:06	Maxine Gadd, Audio Recording	Okay, this is called “Shore Animals,” and it says, “speech feas—piece with flute,” and the flute has to listen.
		And it can pl–, it can speak, too. You have to listen to it. Yeah, you never heard it before.
05:21	Richard Sommer, Audio Recording	I think it’s learning how to speak.
05:26	Maxine Gadd, Audio Recording	It’s called “Shore Animals,” a speech piece with a flute.
		[Maxine begins to recite, Richard plays the flute] “So hearing where the poppy stopped me, small chance to star spiel, all you have told me, gone, false and beautiful gods and groves. People truth. Put it into song when the traffic is gone, gone, gone. I’ll fling it in the air—my debt to your tongue, Saturn. In your minds, I’ve split a spleen, lust my lust. Come along, fawn. Oh! So, I have to whistle to you.”
		[Audience laughs] [Whistling]
06:23	Katherine McLeod [from ShortCuts 1.2]	That was Maxine Gadd reading “Shore Animals” with Richard Sommer improvising the flute at a reading that took place in Montreal on February 18, 1972.
06:34	Theme music	[Theme music fades in]
06:38	Katherine McLeod	Head to SpokenWeb.ca to find out more about the audio of the month and how to listen to the entire recording. My name is Katherine McLeod. Tune in next month for another deep dive into the sounds of the SpokenWeb archives.
07:00	Theme music	[Theme music ends]

Katherine McLeod

PRODUCER

Katherine McLeod is an Assistant Professor, Limited Term Appointment, in the Department of English at Concordia University. She is the principal investigator for her SSHRC-funded IDG project “Literary Radio: Developing New Methods of Audio Research.” She has co-edited with Jason Camlot the most recent special issue of English Studies in Canada, “New Sonic Approaches in Literary Studies” – and, among her publications on CanLit, archives and sound, she recently wrote about SpokenWeb as a DH project in the book, Future Horizons: Canadian Digital Humanities. She produces the series ShortCuts for The SpokenWeb Podcast.

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Shortcuts 5.4

Re-Listening to Improvisation in the Archives

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Shortcuts 5.4

Re-Listening to Improvisation in the Archives

April 24, 2024

Produced byKatherine McLeod

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Katherine McLeod