CCE projects and activities

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CCE projects and activities

Weekly meetings

Tiny desk concerts we love

Online virtual collections produced or co-produced by the CCE

The following were funded by Heritage Canada, with support from folkwaysAlive:

Major outreach and development projects spearheaded by the CCE (completed and in-progress)

Two principal initiatives:

  1. Edmonton Transcultural Orchestra, a university-community live music group
  2. TranceCultural Orchestra, a global virtual group
  3. Music for Global Human Development




The new Edmonton Transcultural Orchestra (ETO) seeks musical bridges across the artificial "cultural" divides between people. "Culture" has no plural! The world is not comprised of a discrete set of autonomous "cultures"; rather culture flows among all of us, its only boundaries being humanity itself. "Culture" is is shared but doesn't define hermetic groups; each of us carries a unique cultural mix linking to myriad others.

The ETO demonstrates the linkages among all humanity in two ways: (1) socially, in the group itself, which is diverse: university students, staff, and faculty; community, and (2) musically, by highlighting the flow of music through people.

Check out a recent performance on Instagram (City Hall, Nov 10).




Music for Global Human Development, comprising two main branches:

  1. Songs for Sustainable Peace and Development
  2. Music for Cultural Continuity and Civil Society

especially the following:

Research and archiving projects

These research projects are geared towards the CCE's mission to archive and disseminate the sounds of the world, making them available for educational, scientific, and aesthetic use.

  • Deep Learning for Sound Recognition (DLSR): applying machine learning techniques to recognize features in musical, linguistic, biological, and other recordings. In collaboration with the Department of Computing Science, and faculty participation also from MLCS, Linguistics, Biology.
  • Sounds of Islam: a digital repository comprising field recordings from the world of Islam. A partnership involving Music, Arts Resource Centre, and the Library's Digital Initiatives; funded by KIAS.

Educational projects

CCE's educational projects go beyond the regular UofA curriculum to connect with communities, locally and globally...

CD productions

Virtual reality displays

Recent concerts include

  • Nagham al-Ams (Melodies of Yesterday): Songs from Aleppo (Oct 14, 2016), part of the Music for Global Human Development symposium, featuring music and musicians from Syria.
  • Music for a Better World (video) (program notes) (http://bit.ly/m4abw16; Jan 30, 2016), for International Week 2016, "For a better world: the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals", presented with the Medical Students Association and the Students International Health Association (SIHA), and featuring a wide range of artists with simultaneous slide show; the concert served also as a benefit for Syrian refugees in Edmonton, in collaboration with the Edmonton Mennonite Centre for Newcomers.
  • MENAME Concert featuring distinguished guest George Sawa (March 2015)
  • MENAME Concert featuring distinguished guests Hossam Ramzy, Emile el-Bassili, and al-Gamal al-Kurdi (November 2014)

Recent and upcoming workshops include

  • Indian music workshop, spring 2018
  • Persian music with Mehdi Rezania (Oct 26, 2016)
  • Indian music with sarod master Rajeev Taranath (Oct 22, 2016)
  • George Sawa, qanun (spring 2015)
  • Hossam Ramzy, Egyptian percussion (fall 2014)

Conferences (upcoming and recent)

  • Heavenly Acts III: Faith, Performance and the Expressive Arts - An International Symposium, Nov 25-26, 2016, and including two concerts. Funded by the UK's Arts and Humanities Research Council.
  • Music for Global Human Development, a SSHRC-sponsored seminar and concert, October 14, 2016
  • Exhibiting Sound (2015), a three-day international symposium, including keynote speakers, and exhibitions/concerts, sponsored by SSHRC.
  • I am a Bird from Heaven's Garden (in collaboration with the Aga Khan Development Network and the Office of the Provost, University of Alberta, with conference funding from SSHRC. (2013) video
  • Sounds and Spaces of Muslim Piety, in collaboration with the Association for the Study of Ginans, and the Office of the Provost (2011)

Archive

  • Recordings: Our extensive media holdings include field recordings and commercial recordings representing music of South Asia, Middle East, Africa, and North America, including Sufi music collections, Northern Alberta Fiddle Collection, and a large Jazz collection. Some of these collections are available online via projects listed above, e.g. http://bit.ly/vmctm
  • Musical instruments. A portion of our collection is on display in 3-32 and 3-47 Old Arts; a larger collection is stored in our archive.

Media

Browse some of our collections via our two virtual museums (see above); a few images have also been published on the Edmonton Journal website

Recent news stories:

Reports

CCE Report on activities 2018-19