News, callouts, conferences, jobs, and more...

June 2023

Due to a technical error, we are resending this issue of the JEN Research Interest Group Newsletter.

Friends,

Welcome to the June  edition of the JEN Research Interest Group newsletter. Below please find a variety of news items, announcements, callouts, new publications, and job opportunities. Scheduling for the January 2024 conference in New Orleans will be announced soon, make sure to mark the calendars and reserve your hotel rooms - this one will be very special!. Research presentations and poster sessions will be Thursday of the conference and we’re planning on a JENRing meeting on Friday 11am to introduce the mentoring initiative and provide info on how to prepare articles for the journal. In the meantime, if you’re interested in participating as a mentee or mentor in please contact our mentoring chair, Dr. Tish Oney, at tishoney@gmail.com.

I’m still hoping to strengthen the network collaborations for research projects and am open for ideas on what would be helpful and how a stronger network could be established.

I’d like to draw your attention to the callout for the 8th Rhythm Changes Conference to be held April 3-6 in Graz, Austria. This is one of the premier jazz research gatherings in Europe and beyond and a great learning and networking opportunity, hope to see you there. 

The monthly series of webinars will continue on July 7, 3pm EST  with Nicholas Payne - The Musicality of Birds: From Charles Darwin to Hermeto Pascoal on the first Friday of every month featuring one of the authors published in JAZZ (Jazz Education in Research and Practice). The goal of the presentations is to share the findings as well as ideas for practical implementations in the classroom and curricula. Please look for links and invitations to the webinars on the JEN website and Facebook page. They’ll be live streamed on Facebook, but those who register for the zoom webinar will be able to ask questions and interact with the panelists. All previous presentations can be accessed here.

Please feel free to share this news compilation and invite colleagues to join the mailing list and/or Facebook page. Remember to check the updated job listings here. If you have new books/ articles/ dissertations published, send me the info to be included in the newsletter. Also send over ideas on how JENRing can help you in your jazz research and networking. Items of interest related to jazz research may also be shared on the Facebook page.

Sincerely,

Monika Herzig

JEN Research Interest Group Committee Chair

Newsletter Sections

Jump to any section by clicking below

EARLY BIRD REGISTRATION OPEN!

⬇ FREE WEBINAR ⬇

The Musicality of Birds: From Charles Darwin to Hermeto Pascoal
with Nick Payne

Traditionally, music is studied from an anthropocentric point of view, which neglects the wealth of knowledge that can be learned from considering the role of the natural world in the creation of music. One of the most notable contemporary jazz composers to draw inspiration from the natural world is the Brazilian composer Hermeto Pascoal. This presentation explores several compositions by Hermeto that were directly inspired by birds and examines the musicality of birds through the lens of evolutionary biology and aesthetics, particularly by considering the ideas of Charles Darwin. By understanding the function of bird songs and how they have evolved, new insights can be gained that will offer a new way to appreciate Hermeto Pascoal’s music. 

Friday, July 7 • 3pm ET
Zoom (Members) & Facebook Live (Non-Members)

A presentation from the Jazz Education Research and Practice Journal, a publication of the Jazz Education Network.

Have a question you don't see covered above? Once registered, you will be invited to submit any questions you would like answered.

PLEASE NOTE:
JEN Members will receive a link 1-hr before the event to join the Zoom Room.

Non-members & youth (under 18) members will receive a link 1-hr before the event to join via Facebook Live. Click here for membership information.

Your membership associated with _t.e.s.t_@example.com is expired. JOIN or RENEW NOW!

NEWS

5 Minutes That Will Make You Love New Orleans Jazz
by Giovanni Russonello

Over the past few months, The New York Times has asked experts to answer the question, What would you play a friend to make them fall in love with jazz? We’ve covered lots of artists, instruments and musical styles — but this time we’re tackling a whole city.

The United States is full of cities with their own rich jazz histories, but none goes back as far as New Orleans. And the music remains very much a part of life there. To really discover the beauty of New Orleans jazz, the in-person experience is key. This is a participatory, effervescent music. But unless you’re about to book a trip, why not take five minutes to read and listen, and see if you get hooked?

Jazz’s roots can be traced back to Congo Square, a plaza in central New Orleans that had been a gathering place for Native Americans before the arrival of Europeans. In the antebellum era, enslaved Africans often gathered there to play music and dance, using whatever instruments they had — bamboula drums, horns, bells, banjos — and carrying their cultural traditions forward. 

After emancipation, the country blues being played on plantations across the South blended with the music played by New Orleans society orchestras and other African diasporic styles blowing in from the Caribbean, creating the polyphonic improvised sound we now know as early jazz.

In the 100-plus years since then, New Orleans has remained something of a cultural anomaly in the United States: rooted in its own traditions, and fortified against broader commercial trends. Music has been its strongest fortifier. Marching bands are heard at funerals and second-line parades on most weekends. On Mardi Gras and St. Joseph’s Day, culture-bearers in resplendent, feathery regalia march and perform in honor of the Native Americans who once sheltered fugitives fleeing slavery. And music is simply a way of life: Unless a storm is brewing, you won’t find a single night in New Orleans without multiple bands playing somewhere.

While brass bands and traditional jazz lie at the core of this city’s traditions — and no conversation about them can ever go on too long without a mention (or three) of Louis Armstrong — New Orleans has also fostered greatness across the musical spectrum: from Black classical composers to post-bop royalty to avant-garde experimentalists. The songs below are just the tip of the iceberg. Find a playlist at the bottom of the article, and be sure to leave your own favorites in the comments.

Who owns content generated by AI?

The meteoric rise of artificial intelligence is raising thorny questions about exactly who owns the output of AI tools. And, as AI-generated music and art crosses more into the mainstream, pressure is growing to find the answers. CNN's Michael Holmes talks to Martin Clancy, founding chair of a global committee focused on the ethics of AI in the arts, about the promise and peril of this new technology.

Our Top Ten: The best jazz solos on classic rock and pop hits
by Lee Mergner

The presence of jazz players on non-jazz records constitutes a long tradition in American popular music, but it may have hit its peak in the ’70s and ’80s with baby-boomer rockers and pop stars looking to jazzers to enhance, or even legitimize, their recordings. During that boom in the record industry, jazz musicians who formerly would have been touring with Art Blakey or Betty Carter were taking high-paying session gigs in New York and Los Angeles. Of course, when all that studio work died out, many returned to jazz as their primary focus.

For this Our Top Ten piece, we opted for players who are more well-known for their jazz career than for their work as studio musicians. Hence, we haven’t included Raphael Ravenscroft, whose main claim to fame, besides his Spinal Tap-like name, was his earworm solo on Gerry Rafferty’s “Baker Street.” We also tried to choose the most popular artists and songs we could think of, in search of that sweet spot where massive pop hit meets cool jazz cameo. The list is in chronological order. 

Ten years of the Love Supreme Jazz Festival:
“It’s a meeting of different tribes”

Ahead of the 10th Love Supreme Jazz Festival, Nick Hasted speaks to its founder Ciro Romano to discover the secret of the event’s success

The Love Supreme festival has become a fixture in the British jazz summer. Its unique mix of cutting-edge jazz names, crowd-pulling headliners from funk, soul and hip-hop, and its open-air setting in Glynde village in Sussex’s rolling South Downs celebrates its 10th anniversary this year. Europe’s biggest green-field jazz festival right from the start, its current daily attendance of 24,000 was just 4,500 in 2013. Back then, festival founder Ciro Romano reflects to Jazzwise, Love Supreme required a huge leap of faith.

“The North Sea Jazz festival was a big influence,” he recalls. “I saw Prince, Herbie Hancock, Joshua Redman and Brad Mehldau, then something esoteric in a room upstairs, and I thought, ‘This would work in a field’, as a classic British jazz festival. We had a year of investors’ rejection. Jazz was very different then, perceived as for seated clubs, with a very old audience.”

Romano was equally spurred on by what he didn’t want. “As someone into Elvis Costello, R&B and hip-hop, I loved jazz, but was taken aback when I went to shows in sterile, seated venues, with maybe 250 old guys like me watching someone talented but not exciting.” Romano also factored in the hopeful stirrings of a more energetic, youthful jazz culture: “I went to something in South London where everyone was dancing, and nobody was trying to look like Miles Davis on Kind of Blue. It was the beginnings of Shabaka Hutchings, Nubya Garcia and Ezra Collective. Jazz had been operating in a vacuum, and they broke out of it.”

Your membership associated with _t.e.s.t_@example.com is expired. JOIN or RENEW NOW!

CALLOUTS & CONFERENCES

University of the Arts Helsinki Theatre Academy:
CARPA8 Registration is now open

The Performing Arts Research Centre (Tutke) in collaboration with the Comparative Dramaturgy and Performance Research Programme of the Theatre Academy, University of the Arts Helsinki, are arranging the eight international conference on artistic research

SOLVITUR AMBULANDO ‘solved by moving’
DRAMATURGIES OF ARTISTIC RESEARCH
an ambulatory colloquium & laboratory 

Conference dates: 24-26 August 2023

Venue: University of the Arts Helsinki Theatre Academy, Haapaniemenkatu 6, 00530 Helsinki

Registration is open from 12 June to 13 August 2023 (EEST +3:00 at 23:59).

CARPA8 combines colloquium and laboratory, by bringing together two processual activities and keeping them in motion: dramaturgy and artistic research. The event, dynamic in form and content, aims to combine embodied artistic practice with timely conceptualisation and theorisation to enquire what happens to artistic research when it takes a dramaturgical twist. We will assemble artists and practitioners from the performing arts field with innovators, researchers and theorists to explore, experiment and discuss how expanded notions of dramaturgy and artistic research cross-fertilise each other and expand into other fields.

Plenary Session Presenters

Synne K. Behrndt
Lecturer, researcher and dramaturg
Assistant Professor
The Department for Performing Arts
University of the Arts, Stockholm

Marcela A. Fuentes
Associate Professor
Director of Graduate Studies, Department of Performance Studies
Northwestern University

Hanns Holger Rutz
Professor for Artistic Research
Gustav Mahler Private University for Music (GMPU)

Call for Articles
Jazzforschung / Jazz Research Vol. 52:
Jazz Re:Search in 21st-Century Academia and Beyond

Dear participants of the 13th International Jazz Research Conference!

Following the conference, we invite you to submit articles that celebrate, reflect, enhance and advance the study of jazz, both within and outside academia. We welcome papers addressing the journal theme from multiple perspectives, including musicology, cultural studies, jazz history, media studies, sociology, music analysis and practice-based research (see original call for papers).

Please inform us by 1 July 2023 if you plan to submit a paper for the conference volume.
Articles will be due by 20 November 2023 and will undergo a double-blind peer review. Hence, we kindly ask you to submit two versions of your article: the original version and a fully anonymized version.

Articles (max. 7000 words, bibliography excluded) should be submitted together with an abstract (max. 250 words) and a short biography (max. 100 words) as a Word document to Christa Bruckner-Haring and André Doehring at jazzresearch-publications@kug.ac.at.

Jazzforschung / Jazz Research Vol. 52 is planned to be published in fall 2024 in print and as an e-book with our publisher Hollitzer (Vienna).

We look forward to hearing from you!

Best regards,
André Doehring and Christa Bruckner-Haring

Your membership associated with _t.e.s.t_@example.com is expired. JOIN or RENEW NOW!

RECENT PUBLICATIONS

Journal of Jazz Studies, Volume 14, No 1

The Journal of Jazz Studies (JJS), formerly the Annual Review of Jazz Studies, is published by the Institute of Jazz Studies at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey. Addressed to jazz scholars and enthusiasts alike, JJS provides a forum for the ever-expanding range and depth of jazz scholarship, drawing from a broad range of methodological approaches.

The Journal of Jazz Studies (JJS) is published twice yearly, in spring and fall.

The first issue of JJS was dated October 1973. JJS was published twice yearly through 1979, at which point it became an annual publication, changing its name to the Annual Review of Jazz Studies (ARJS). In 2011, ARJS became an open-access online journal and resumed its former name, Journal of Jazz Studies. The last print issue of JJS was vol. 6, no. 1 (Fall/Winter 1979), so the first online issue was vol. 7, no. 1 (Spring 2011).

This is an open access journal which means that all content is freely available without charge to the user or his/her institution. Users are allowed to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of the articles, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without asking prior permission from the publisher or author. This is in accordance with the Budapest Open Access Initiative definition of open access.

Volume 14 No 1 Includes a multitude of articles addressing Kenny G and his music, attempting to situate his modern music in the greater social context of jazz as a whole. Additional articles include an analysis of Mary Halvorson’s playing, historical photos of Buddy Bolden, and a discussion of Count Basie’s family papers at the Institute of Jazz Studies.

Roots & Routes: A Guide to Developing Repertoire and Styles
by Mike Rossi

This collection of (twelve) original pieces was inspired by many years of musical travels and experiences in Africa, Japan, Brazil, Europe and the US. My previous books (Contrast and Continuity in Jazz Improvisation, Uncommon Etudes from Common Scales, Uncommon Bebop, Odd Times: Uncommon Etudes for Uncommon Time Signatures), mainly examined specific approaches to jazz improvisation. These compositions demonstrate the influences of World and Ethnic Music on jazz, with a particular focus on the music of Southern Africa.

The play-along is intended for a wide range of instruments with medium to advanced levels of instrumental proficiency. The tempos range from medium slow to medium fast. Musical styles include samba, swing, New Orleans second line, jazz rock, kwela, ghoema, mbaquanga and mzabalazo.

NB: Many of these pieces can be heard on the new Mike Rossi Project album Roots & Routes (Nov 2022) which is available on all digital platforms.

---------

From Maarten Weyler

I am so thrilled to see a new publication by Mike Rossi. Our collaboration dates to the beginning of this millennium after I was present at his ‘Contrast and Continuity book’ presentation at a JEN conference. Thereafter I invited Mike to a jazz camp in Belgium and since then, we regularly work together for workshops, masterclasses, summer camps in Europe and Japan.                                             

What do we need in music? Not only many hours of study, but fun as well. That’s what keeps us going. That’s what will keep you motivated. And that’s what I always find in Mike’s work and publications. An exquisite didactical approach, inviting titles such as Beauty & the Blues, and all of this with great play-along tracks in different styles from Kwela (South-Africa) over Dorian to Swing. But, as always, and that’s what makes his work outstanding: this promises again a joy to do. You really feel the enthusiasm Mike had in preparing this new book and recordings. This is also what you will experience while practicing with this great material: Fun & Superb Music. And that’s all we musicians need. Isn’t it?

Maarten Weyler: Coordinator Jazz Department School of Arts, Gent (Belgium), Coordinator Jazz Camp, Kanazawa (Japan),

Educator at the Halewynstichting, Antwerpen (Belgium).

Musicology Australia

Musicology Australia is pleased to announce the publication of issue 44/2

Musicology Australia is the scholarly journal of the Musicological Society of Australia. Since its inception in 1963, the journal has published articles on all aspects of music research, including historical musicology, ethnomusicology, popular music, indigenous music practices, jazz, theory and analysis, organology, performance practice, contemporary music and psychology of music.

Musicology Australia is open to new submissions at any time. Contributors are not required to write on Australian music or be Australian-based musicologists. For further information and instructions for potential authors, please see the link above.

Issue 44/2:

Sarah Kirby – Editorial

Laura Case – The Adaptation of Violin Playing by Indigenous People in Early Twentieth-Century Western Australia and New South Wales

Matt Lawson – Musical Catharsis and Identity in Holocaust Cinema: Der letzte Zug (2006)

Colloquy: Janice B. Stockigt, Michael Talbot, Andrew Frampton, Frederic Kiernan & Denis Collins – A Case for a Critical Edition of the Complete Works of Jan Dismas Zelenka (1679–1745) 

“RUMINATIONS & REFLECTIONS” (BY DAVE LIEBMAN & RICHIE BEIRACH)

In the opening jacket blurb for “Ruminations and Reflections” (Cymbal Press), Pat Metheny writes,  We really don’t have an exact name for musicians like Dave and Richie. Across decades of recordings and concerts, their aspirations obliterate the definitions of any single genre…. Both are master players who continue to strive for what goes beyond and what lies beneath. Despite an abundant discography, star-studded resumés, and overwhelming acclaim from their peers, saxophonist Dave Liebman and pianist Richie Beirach are barely mentioned in major jazz history books. While those books can only discuss a limited number of iconic musicians, the story of the Liebman/Beirach partnership deserves to be heard. “Ruminations and Reflections” draws from several conversations between the two musicians, which trace their remarkable 50+ years of collective music-making.

The book opens with the first meeting of Liebman and Beirach, at a 1967 jam session at Queens College in New York. In hindsight, Beirach admits that he only knew “a tune and a half” at that time and that Liebman had far more experience as a jazz musician. After the session, Liebman and Beirach went out to the parking lot, and on the hood of Liebman’s Chevy Bel Air, the saxophonist instructed the pianist on what tunes to learn. By early 1969, each had found apartments in lower Manhattan about a mile and a half away from each other. Liebman had a loft where he held free open jam sessions, and Beirach was a frequent visitor. The two spent much of their time transcribing records and rehearsing as a duo. Liebman was also responsible for finding two new tenants for the building. To explain how Dave Holland and Chick Corea became his new neighbors, Liebman takes a sudden backward leap to the months before he met Beirach to a pivotal trip he made to London, where—on his first night in town–he met Holland and several other jazz lions at Ronnie Scotts’ club. At Holland’s invitation, Liebman moved in to the bassist’s flat for three weeks; when Holland moved to New York as a member of Miles Davis‘ band, Liebman returned the favor by recommending Holland to his landlord. Soon after that, Corea was in search of an apartment after getting a divorce, and once again, Liebman came to the rescue.

Liebman’s time-jump is a little jarring (especially three pages into the book!) but narrative inconsistencies are a recurring problem with this memoir. There are numerous stories told about musicians and hangers-on, and it is fairly easy to surmise that many of them are apocryphal. Perhaps the most egregious example concerns the bebop pianist Al Haig. While discussing a long-closed restaurant that featured live jazz, Beirach makes a passing reference that Haig played there while on bail after killing his wife. In truth, Haig was acquitted of murder in that 1968 case, and the only person who ever questioned that verdict was Haig’s previous ex-wife, who discussed her theory of the murder in a book published nearly 40 years after the event, and 15 years after Haig’s death! Someone needed to fact-check the interview transcripts before the Liebman/Beirach memoir was published…and it wouldn’t hurt to do so before publishing another edition.

After a thorough and entertaining discussion of their lives in the 1970s, Liebman and Beirach offer their opinions of several famous musicians and other music-related topics. The discussion of jazz education is especially enlightening, with in-depth examples of the new ways in which young jazz musicians learn their craft. With touring big bands and major record companies a thing of the past, and many of the older giants unable to support apprentice musicians, music students can only get the training they need through master classes, YouTube videos, and participation in established university ensembles. Liebman admits that the level of teaching jazz at the college level has improved significantly in the last few years. Both men eventually agree that the real-world experiences of playing on the road are essential to being a fully-professional jazz musician. Their other opinions are less considered. Their appraisals of Bill Evans, McCoy Tyner, and Herbie Hancock are based on single albums rather than career overviews, and Beirach seems overly harsh on Corea, citing a perceived drop in creativity (starting with “Light as a Feather“), and blaming it on Corea’s belief in Scientology. Beirach is entitled to his own opinion, but it seems reckless to write off 50 years of music that has been widely acclaimed elsewhere.

The book improves as it continues with a tour of Brooklyn and Manhattan, with the two men reminiscing about their early years (Ironically, they grew up within blocks of each other in Brooklyn, but never met until that jam session in 1967). The warm feelings continue with a series of letters that Liebman and Beirach wrote to their deceased jazz heroes. Liebman shows  deep appreciation for the lessons he learned from Miles Davis, Pete La Roca, and Elvin Jones, while Beirach reveals his admiration for Chet Baker and Stan Getz (while questioning the latter about his abrupt changes of attitude). There is a superb transcription of a jazz appreciation lecture delivered to a group of Polish non-musicians, followed by a detailed explanation of the duo’s preparation for concerts and recordings. The final section is perhaps the most interesting, as Beirach self-critiques 22 of the duo’s albums. Some of the essays concentrate on the circumstances of the recording sessions, but the best comments come when he talks about the music itself (especially when discussing different recordings of the same composition by Liebman and Beirach’s collectively led quartet, Quest).

“Ruminations and Reflections” is not the book it might have been, but unlike the biographies of the past, this memoir is apparently published on demand. This makes revisions and corrections almost as easy as revising the text on a website. With a thorough fact-check, general copy-editing, and some re-writing, future editions of this book would be a worthy testament to the collective genius of its subjects.

Your membership associated with _t.e.s.t_@example.com is expired. JOIN or RENEW NOW!

Follow Us | Connect with Us

WARNING:
If you choose to unsubscribe, you will no longer receive any emails from JEN, including membership benefits & renewal information, and the announcement of events & programs.