Since its creation in June 1977, Modern Fuel Artist-Run Centre, formerly known as the Kingston Artists' Association Incorporated (KAAI), has organized and hosted over 1000 art events in Kingston and its surrounding regions, including: exhibitions, workshops, festivals, art and music performances, local artist’s auctions, and poetry readings. Throughout the archival process, Modern Fuel has found information about the facilitation of three editions of the Ear it Live music festival in 1979, 1980 and 1981. This festival was famous in the late 1970's and early 1980's for generating a following of performers and composers from different genres and backgrounds who explored profound new musical boundaries and landscapes. The Ear it Live festival was first facilitated in 1978 by the Music Gallery, a Toronto-based music centre established by the Canadian Creative Music Collective (CCMC) in 1976. Later it was produced as a collaborative project with the Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal (MBAM) alongside the assistance of the Canada Council and the Ontario Arts Council. At its peak ,the festival was hosted by eight Ontario and Quebec cities: Toronto, Ottawa, Peterborough, London, Kingston, Montreal, Sherbrooke and Quebec City, and attracted musicians as diverse as Robert Leriche, Nobuo Kubota, David Mott and jazz saxophonist Jemeel Moondoc- who you can see here playing with his quartet and N.A.M.E at KAAI’s former location on Queens Street on October 6, 1979. Bart Testa wrote about the 1981 edition of the festival in Maclean’s Magazine (November 16, 1981): “the wildly experimental exhibition of musical esotérica attracted almost 3,000 people, up a full third over last year and a sharp contrast to the minuscule audiences that usually greet this type of music.” Also talking about the festival’s last edition at La revue Intervention (February 1982) Jacques Digle defined it as “une première manifestation de musique improvisée à Québec dans les années '80”-the first demonstration of improvised music in Quebec in the 80's. In 1980, the event was announced as “An International Festival of New Music” and in the following year as “An International Festival of Jazz and Improvised Music”. These names and the list of attending musicians reveal the broader, dynamic scope of the festival's artistic intent. Modern Fuel Artist-Run Centre hosted at least three of the festival’s four editions (October 1979, October 1980 and October/November 1981), demonstrating its central role in Kingston as an open space dedicated to contemporary art and the exploration and experimentation of all its forms in the last 45 years. Avant-garde music performances were often present at Modern Fuel programs. Lubomyr Melnyk (1949), the important Canadian composer and pianist of Ukrainian origin famous for his continuous music, played at least two performances organized by the KAAI in the 1980’s at the Kingston Public Library. He also wrote a piece called NIHIL for the Kingston Youth Orchestra. Thanks to KAAI, Melnyk also performed at one of the first concerts organized by the Music Gallery (Toronto) in 1977, one year before the creation of the Ear it Live festival.   

The Kingston Artists' Association Inc. (KAAI)/Modern Fuel Artist-Run Centre funds at the Queen’s University Archives are being digitized thanks to a grant from the Canada Council for the Arts.

​

See the exhibition poster on display at Tara's Natural Foods September 23 to October 14 2022.