The Jazz of Interpreting

American Journal of Sociology, 2009

University of Chicago Press eBooks, 2008

2016

Jazz as a creative act is distinct, not so much in style but in its performance as a music and as a verb. Musical material contained within a score by the composer is used to generate a template and space for participating musicians to contribute ideas as individuals and as a collective in the form of improvisation and ‘arrangement’, and continues to be the unique element in jazz performance or jazzing. Rather than identifying stylistic considerations in terms of history and theory, I propose that we consider of equal importance the notion of ‘jazz as process’ in regards to the music’s specific character. Interactions take place where participants are required to make decisions as to the amount of liberty taken between the composer’s direction, and the improvising musicians’ performance as arrangers of the compositional material. Various illustrations, using analogies such as ‘composition as experiment’, ‘creative design’, ‘decomposition’, ‘intangibles of intention and interpretation in the score’s performance’, ‘jazz as experiment’, and ‘small jazz ensemble composition as a social experiment’, are conducive for investigating the invention, performance and reflection of small jazz ensemble composition. These examples at play in music-making help form the hypothesis of intuition and intellect as a strand in framing and contextualizing the examination of presentation in small jazz ensemble composition; beginning with the musical idea, writing of a work, to its rehearsal and completed performance, thus contributing to understandings of jazz process. Which leads me to ask: How do various illustrations, using analogies, demonstrate methods involved in the composition, development, absorption, interpretation and transferral of musical material from the score to the performance, thus contributing to artistic practice as a composer/player/leader of a small jazz ensemble, and assist in the comprehension of intuition and intellect as jazz process?

Artes, 2022

Musical interpretation, in the form of the act of spontaneous composition, defined jazz throughout its stylistic evolution. Unlike other serious music, jazz has crystallised mainly due to the creative act of musical interpretation and less to the process of written musical construction. Within this cerebral musical genre, the act of performing took over as the fundamental role in the artistic communication between jazz musicians and audience but it especially took the form of an interrelation in the collective musical interpretation. The act of musical improvisation, in terms of jazz, is controlled by certain stylistic parameters, associated with form, phrasing and timbre, constantly relating to the harmonic, rhythmic and melodic planes. The standardisation of these parameters transformed jazz into a conversational musical language, which allows constant and organised communication between musicians through the phenomenon of interplay (the interaction of performers during the collective interpretive act). The principles of interplay are also integrated in the solo interpretation, especially in the case of pianists, who always improvise referring to the context and the relationship created between the accompaniment and the melodic plane. At the same time, just like verbal communication, mastering the jazz language involves reaching the level of free speech, with a spontaneous and contextual expression. This freedom of artistic expression involves the assimilation of the jazz language, creating a personal vocabulary and its use as a means of constructing authentic (spontaneously created) and eloquent musical discourses. Jazz language cannot be assimilated only through individual study, as is possible in the serious music of European tradition. The study and improvement of jazz musicians constantly depends on artistic socialisation and musical conversation. Jazz is a musical genre in continuous transformation, due to the fact that it is definitely more of an act of interpretation than of a compositional one. Jazz imposed musical interpretation as having the same contribution of creation with the compositional act, in terms of stylistic definition and crystallisation of an elaborated musical current or genre.

International Journal of Music Education, 1995

Jazz as Narrative: Narrating Cognitive Processes Involved in Jazz Improvisation, 2019

Introduction This chapter examines jazz improvisation, using the concept of narrative in two different ways. First, it addresses narrative as a problematic met- aphor among jazz musicians and scholars—“improvisation is storytell- ing.”1 Although jazz musicians seek to maintain awareness of the narra- tive frame, or schema, of the initial song form, as they create variations to tell their own individualized story, they must also react instantly to the other musicians simultaneously creating their own variations. As a result, the improvisers’ intention with respect to their story may not be so simply defined…