Matthias Domingo Mushinski

In the broadest and truest sense, Matthias’ research is best described as a sustained engagement with Amiri Baraka’s liner notes for the album Live at Birdland (1964) by John Coltrane, with specific attention to Baraka’s refusal of regulatory logics that formulate beauty as inextricably linked to terror. His writing was most recently featured in Obsidian: Literature & Arts in the African Diaspora where he contributed an analysis of Cecil Taylor’s critical reception in Paris during the late 1960s. He has presented his research at a variety of academic conferences spanning the fields of Film Studies, Black Studies, Improvisation Studies, and Jazz Studies. Embracing constant preparation as a precondition for slipping with the music as it slips from our grasp, Matthias spends his days meditating on the distinction—or lack thereof—between montage and ensemble, while rigorously celebrating free jazz’s appeal to a different formulation of time, space and being all/together. He is a PhD student in Film & Moving Image Studies at Concordia University.