Ajay Heble is a Professor of English in the School of English and Theatre Studies at the University of Guelph.  He is the author or editor of several books including Landing on the Wrong Note: Jazz, Dissonance, and Critical Practice (Routledge), The Tumble of Reason: Alice Munro’s Discourse of Absence (University of Toronto Press), The Other Side of Nowhere: Jazz, Improvisation, and Communities in Dialogue, co-edited with Daniel Fischlin (Wesleyan University Press), Rebel Musics: Human Rights, Resistant Sounds, and the Politics of Music-Making, co-edited with Daniel Fischlin (Black Rose Books), and New Contexts of Canadian Criticism, co-edited with Donna Palmateer Pennee and J.R. (Tim) Struthers (Broadview Press), and he is the Artistic Director and Founder of the award-winning Guelph Jazz Festival and Colloquium  (www.guelphjazzfestival.com).  He is also a founding co-editor of the peer-reviewed journal Critical Studies in Improvisation/Études critiques en improvisation (www.criticalimprov.com).

In January 2007, Dr. Heble received a prestigious seven-year Major Collaborative Research Initiatives (MCRI) grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) for a large scale, multi-institutional interdisciplinary research project that he is directing. Entitled “Improvisation, Community, and Social Practice” (ICASP) (www.improvcommunity.ca), this project brings together a dynamic international research team of 35 leading scholars from 20 different institutions to study the social implications of improvised musical practices, and it fosters innovative partnerships with a wide-range of community partners. Outcomes will range across a wide spectrum of electronic, broadcast, and print media, with a focus on policy-oriented and community-facing impacts. In addition to public discourse and scholarly publication, ICASP highlights collaboration with arts presenters, educators, street-level organizations, and policy makers to ensure the broadest possible impact.
Under Dr. Heble’s visionary leadership, The Guelph Jazz Festival—a three-time recipient of the Lieutenant Governor’s Award of the Arts (1997, 2000, 2001) and a short-listed finalist for the Premier’s Award for Excellence in the Arts (2008)--has achieved a rock-solid international reputation as one of the world’s most inspired and provocative musical events.  As its founder, Heble has jolted the citizens of Guelph into an appreciation of improvised and avant garde music, and delighted aficionados from around the world with his innovative and daring programming. Since 1996, Heble has organized as part of the Guelph Jazz Festival an annual international conference on the social implications of improvised music.  This is the only regular and ongoing academic event of its kind attached to a major jazz festival
Heble is also an accomplished pianist. His first CD, in collaboration with percussionist Jesse Stewart, was released on the Guelph Jazz Festival label, IntrepidEar, in 2001.   All proceeds from this recording, as from the live concert it documents, have gone towards the festival.  Heble has also participated as a musician in concerts and recordings in support of a range of charitable or not-for-profit organizations.
Heble is in high-demand as a speaker, panelist, music jurist, and community-based arts advisor.  He has served on the Executive (and as past Vice President) on the Board of Directors for Jazz Festivals Canada, a not-for-profit arts service organization representing and advocating for jazz festivals and jazz presenters across Canada.  He also sits as a member of the organization's Advocacy Committee.  Heble is currently also serving as a member of the Artistic Advisory Committee for the Music Gallery in Toronto, and he has been a judge for the JUNO Awards.  He has given invited lectures and keynote talks drawn from his work at conferences and arts events around the world.
In his teaching, Heble has sought to develop pedagogical strategies that foster connections between what students learn or do at university and how they come to understand themselves as socially responsible citizens. To that end, he has attempted, whenever possible, to design courses at all levels (from first year classes to graduate seminars) to require various forms of community-based learning and research. The final “assignment” in his courses often takes the form of a “pro-active, community-facing intervention” which challenges students to move beyond the walls of the classroom in an effort to make collective interventions in the broader community. One of Heble’s in-progress research projects is a book-length study on human rights and pedagogy that draws on his experiences with community-based learning.

Research: 

Rebel Musics	The Other Side of Nowhere	Different Windows
Landing on the Wrong Note	New Contexts for Canadian Criticism	The Tumble of Reason