January News from the Jazz Education Network Research Interest Group

Dear Friends,

Welcome to the January edition of the JEN Research Interest Group newsletter. Below please find a variety of news items, announcements, callouts, new publications, and job opportunities.

JENX2021 was a huge success! On Wednesday, January 6, we presented a day of research presentations and a panel discussion on Artistic Research in Jazz led by Michael Kahr (Jam Lab University of Music) and a panel on research methods led by Harry Price (Kennesaw State University). Nearly 200 participated throughout the day with questions and feedback and 20 more poster sessions were displayed throughout the conference. Thanks to everyone who participated and contributed to this wonderful and uplifting weekend. Unfortunately, January 6 ended up being a tragic day in US history and made our knowledge and thought exchange with a worldwide community even more meaningful. Although we could not gather in person we were all able to connect and recharge.

The second issue of JAZZ (Jazz Education in Research and Practice) has arrived! It features 200 pages of research articles, case studies, tips, essays, and reviews, all peer-reviewed and edited throughout this past year. JEN membership includes full access on the JEN website, find it here. Please encourage your libraries to order a subscription to this invaluable resource for teachers and students alike from this link. And of course, consider a hard copy for your personal library.

We didn’t have our regular research committee meeting in person which is always inspiring towards pinpointing new goals and directions. But I would still love to get some feedback from you. Here is a quick survey - click here and share your input and how you might want to be involved/ support the JEN Research Committee or the Journal Editorial Board, and any suggestions for future directions of our committee. Thank you so much for your input. You can also email me at mherzig@indiana.edu.

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.

Best wishes for the start of a new semester and lots of positive news in 2021.

Sincerely,

Monika Herzig

JEN Research Interest Group Committee Chair

Editor, JAZZ (Jazz Education in Research and Practice)

A jazz composition competition by JAM MUSIC LAB University (JMLU) in cooperation with the ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra (RSO). The prize-winning work will be premiered on October 8th, 2021 in the Grand Hall of the Konzerthaus Vienna under the direction of chief conductor Marin Alsop. The concert will be recorded by ORF and broadcasted on the Ö1 program. RSO and JMLU are continuing their first collaboration from 2017/18. The composition competition "Spheres of a Genius" was based on the 100th birthday of the jazz composer and pianist Thelonious Monk. This time "Spheres of a Genius" pays tribute to Leonard Bernstein.

The composition competition relates to the role of Leonard Bernstein as a composer. Competitors should aim to create music that reflects the spirit of Leonard Bernstein, his innovation, originality and expressiveness. Special consideration should be given Bernstein’s views on reaching across stylistic borders, expanding the language through the use of jazz elements. The call directs composers to create work that is original, and not quoting from Bernstein. The winning composition must bare evidence of inspiration, rather than imitation.

Phase 1 consists of the submission of a meaningful sketch of the entire work as well as a fully elaborated segment of the score with a duration of 1.5 to 2 minutes. The deadline for submission of Phase 1 is March 20th, 2021. 3 finalists are selected, who we then invite to continue on to Phase 2. Follow the link above for more specific details for submission.

“Everything Changes, Nothing Changes”: Tyshawn Sorey wrote the string quartet that bears that title in 2018. But the sentiment is so tailor-made for the past year that when the JACK Quartet announced it would stream a performance of the work in December, I briefly forgot and assumed it was a premiere, created for these tumultuous yet static times.

I should have known better. Mr. Sorey already had enough on his plate without cooking up a new quartet. The final two months of 2020 alone brought the premieres of a pair of concerto-ish works, one for violin and one for cello, as well as a fresh iteration of “Autoschediasms,” his series of conducted ensemble improvisations, with Alarm Will Sound.

That wasn’t all that happened for him since November. Mills College, where Mr. Sorey is composer in residence, streamed his solo piano set. Opera Philadelphia filmed a stark black-and-white version of his song sequence “Cycles of My Being,” about Black masculinity and racial hatred. JACK did “Everything Changes” for the Library of Congress, alongside the violin solo “For Conrad Tao.” Da Camera, of Houston, put online a 2016 performance of “Perle Noire,” a tribute to Josephine Baker that Mr. Sorey arranged with the soprano Julia Bullock. His most recent album, “Unfiltered,” was released early in March, days before lockdown.

He was the composer of the year.

That’s both coincidental — some of this burst of work was planned long ago — and not. Mr. Sorey has been on everyone’s radar at least since winning a MacArthur “genius” grant in 2017, but the shock to the performing arts since late winter brought him suddenly to the fore as an artist at the nexus of the music industry’s artistic and social concerns.

In the 2019 NPR Music Jazz Critics Poll, five of the top 10 new releases were recordings led or co-led by women artists — a startling 50%. In fact, it is the largest number of projects led by women in the top 10 since the annual poll began 14 years ago, surpassing 2018, when women comprised a third of those rankings.

That would seem to be good news for a musical community that has been frustratingly slow to embrace women musicians. Women in jazz have traditionally been singers, a role that allows them to be dismissed as entertainers who are not fundamental to jazz as "serious" art. Few female instrumentalists — or, for that matter, composers, arrangers and bandleaders — have become part of the music's story, one that stretches back to the late 19th century.

But with the results of the 2020 NPR Music Jazz Critics Poll only days away from publication, it is an opportune moment in which to revisit — and question — claims of women's progress. Any of the optimistic assessments occasioned by this poll, and in the wake of jazz's #Me Too stirrings in recent years, are likely to be premature. Only when women's participation in the music has been clearly defined, documented and measured can we be certain of any improvement in their collective status — or lack thereof.

To that end, NPR Music commissioned Lara Pellegrinelli and a team of independent reporters to analyze the NPR Music Jazz Critics Poll and see what concrete data could reveal about the role of gender in this particular critics' year-end list and the status of women jazz artists generally speaking. Although the findings are currently limited to a gender binary, dividing artists into unequivocal categories for women and men, we acknowledge the presence of a broader spectrum of identities than our project was able to capture, including cisgender women and men, transgender women and men and those with non-binary, gender non-conforming and gender queer identities.

Howard Johnson, who set a new standard by expanding the tuba’s known capacities in jazz, and who moonlighted as a multi-instrumentalist and arranger for some of the most popular acts in rock and pop, died on Monday at his home in Harlem. He was 79.

His death was announced by his publicist, Jim Eigo. He did not specify a cause but said that Mr. Johnson had been ill for a long time.

Fluent and graceful across an enormous range on one of the most cumbersome members of the brass family, Mr. Johnson found his way into almost every kind of scenario — outside of classical music — where you might possibly expect to find the tuba, and plenty where you wouldn’t.

His career spanned hundreds of albums and thousands of gigs. He played on many of the major jazz recordings of the 1960s and ’70s, by musicians like Charles Mingus, McCoy Tyner, Carla Bley and Charlie Haden; contributed arrangements and horn parts for rock stars like John Lennon and Taj Mahal; and performed as an original member of the “Saturday Night Live” band.

At the link above are the results of NPR Music's 8th Annual Jazz Critics Poll (my 15th, going back to the poll's beginnings in the Village Voice). These are the jazz albums that lit up a dark, unsettling year. Maria Schneider's Data Lords was the critics choice — no surprise, though relative unknown Sara Serpa's victory in the Vocal category in a year when both Kurt Elling and Gregory Porter released new albums was. A Thelonious Monk concert recorded at the unlikeliest of venues — a Northern California high school auditorium — in 1968 was voted the year's prize rara avis (my catch-all designation for reissues and never-before-issued finds), and the 23-year-old alto saxophonist Immanuel Wilkins's Omega ran away from the pack in Debut.

We're again including a capsule review of each album in the Top 10 by a critic who voted for that album as the year's best. And as a bonus, we've added capsule reviews of a few solitary No. 1s: albums appearing only on a single ballot, but as that critic's top pick, plus capsules on a pair of albums that finished outside the Top 10 but received an impressive amount of No. 1 votes.

Pixar’s animators have a history of achieving impressive feats, making characters and textures feel more authentic in increasingly complex ways. (That flowing hair! Those landscapes!) But how would they portray jazz?

With “Soul" (streaming on Disney+), the challenge was to translate the music’s emotional and improvisational qualities through a technical process with little room for improvisation. While plenty of animation over the years has gotten the spirit of jazz, “Soul” sits right next to the piano keys to show, in detail, a musician creating. And Pixar knew many eyes, especially those belonging to jazz musicians, would be examining its work.

The film follows Joe Gardner (voiced by Jamie Foxx), a school band teacher by day, a talented but unsuccessful jazz pianist by night (and always). He struggles to get gigs, but when he sits at the piano, he is transported, his stress fades and his passion emerges with each note.

The Pixar filmmakers, known for attention to detail — in “Cars,” the motor sounds of each vehicle came from the same model’s actual engine — knew that capturing the fundamentals of jazz performance would not be possible without the collaboration of jazz artists.

“We wanted to make sure that if this guy is going to be a jazz musician, he should know the clubs and the back story,” the film’s director, Pete Docter, said in a video interview. He and his team visited clubs in New York to get a better understanding. “We would just go up and talk to musicians and ask them, where did you study?” he said. “How did you get here? What other jobs do you have? And tried to really flesh out the world of those characters.”

The Anton Bruckner Private University (ABPU) in Linz Austria invites potential candidates to apply for the academic or artistic doctoral program.

What do we offer?

Individual supervision and support of the team
Doctoral candidates at ABPU will receive individual supervision from leading international experts active in their fields. The individual personal coaching is embedded in a larger professional learning environment preparing doctoral students for their professional career as (artistic) researchers.

Interdisciplinarity, networking and (artistic) scholarly socialisation
To further the development of transdisciplinary competence, as well as (artistic) scholarly socialization and the formation of a professional network, both, the artistic-scholarly and academic doctoral students, are trained in a joint program. The courses provide the doctoral students with academic knowledge and methodological skills, enable them to support their individual research process within and through the collective of a larger research community, and offer them opportunities for professionalization and networking within the international research world.
Within the framework of the series “PARL-Platform for Art and Research Linz” invited guest researchers of high international reputation complement the methodological and theoretical training and introduce the doctoral students to the diversity of (artistic) research.

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In public discussion, a growing concern about the dissipation of political imagination and inability to envisage alternative futures has been articulated over the recent decades. Elements for imagining alternative social formations and futures seem restricted at this current conjuncture. The question of alternatives is, however, currently particularly acute as the climate emergency, growing social inequalities, pandemics, transformation of work and crisis of democracy push us to search for the prerequisites for ecologically and socially sustainable societies. On the one hand, the contemporary crises give rise to growing anxiety, dystopias and polarization of views, but on the other hand, they also animate the process of imagining alternative worlds and making and living utopias here and now.

Art is one of the pivotal arenas in which alternatives are imagined and performed. Art has a complex and multifaceted relationship to what is going on in society: it reflects and comments on, organizes and articulates, manifests and makes things happen. In this special issue, we are particularly interested in the many different forms and methods through which artistic practices and everyday utopias gesture towards the future.

We invite artist researchers from different disciplines to submit expositions for the special issue "Everyday utopias and artistic research".

The expositions can address, for example, the following questions:

What kinds of perspectives can artistic research offer for revitalizing the political imagination and utopian thinking?
What kinds of realities are currently being imagined and put into practice in art?
What kinds of methods and tools can artistic research offer for social thought and action?
How do different spaces, technologies and embodiments shape the practices of imagination?
What kinds of relationships does art have to sustainable societies?
How do everyday utopias manifest themselves in art?
What could utopia mean in pedagogy? What kinds of alternative, arts-based pedagogical methods are practised at the moment?
How is art and artistic research related to hope?

We ask you to create your proposals for research expositions in the Research Catalogue (RC) at www.researchcatalogue.net. Note! The creation of an exposition requires registration and a complete RC user account (see ‘register'). Please submit your proposals (complete expositions) via RC ('submit to publication', 'submit unlimited publication to', and 'ruukku') no later than March 1st, 2021.

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In the context specifically of a British music scene resolutely undergirded by paternalistic, but still traditional-minded institutions such as the BBC and Arts Council on the one hand and the unprecedented commercial success of 1960s acts such as the Beatles on the other, the 1970s and beyond saw ‘new music’, jazz and popular music scenes (broadly conceived) expand, collide and evolve in sometimes dramatic ways. Within and between these traditions lay a multitude of practices—from noise to sonic art, free improvisation to dub, ‘new complexity’ to experimental post-punk—that, according to most narratives, in their cultural variety and non-traditional positions would become characteristic of the vanguard impulse in music after 1970. And yet—to appropriate the remarks of theatre and performance historian James M. Harding—this characterisation of the vanguard ‘just happens to be the one with which critics have the longest acquaintance because it is the one that they have consistently privileged. But how might one counter the weight of that tradition and the lure of its discourse?’ (Harding 2010).

Within, then, the linear temporality of progress that shapes both the history and historiography of music since 1970, including (not ironically) the postmodern ‘rejection’ of the ‘modernist avant-garde’, there are questions to ask about the most suitable ways in which to think through the interface between vanguard music and politics, including whether or not ‘avant-garde’ or ‘vanguard’ remain appropriate to the task. And particularly as it relates to experience in the UK, attending to these post-sixties impulses and new musical practices requires, to say the very least, a broadening of historical attitude, method and perspectives.

This symposium aims therefore to bring together different perspectives on how the history and historiography of ‘vanguard music’ in the UK since 1970 can be traced, documented and rethought. We invite scholars at all stages of their careers to join this conversation and to think again about the place and politics of art and popular musics within this ‘emerging’ musical landscape, and in so doing to draw out and articulate more clearly the dynamics of flux and boundary-shifting that not only helped shape UK music culture since 1970 but have also hindered our ability to fully appreciate alternative patterns of musical and historical movement.

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Since the 1980s, questions of identity markers such as gender, race, and class, have become a central focus of research and academic debates in areas such as musicology, ethnomusicology, musical anthropology and sociology, popular music studies, and many more. In the wake of Philip Ewell’s article on “Music Theory and the White Racial Frame” (2020), such longstanding conversations have been amplified while gaining new momentum in the areas of music theory and music analysis.

The debate surrounding Ewell’s critique of music theory’s white racial frame in general, and Heinrich Schenker’s Anglo-American legacy in particular, have mainly taken place in a US context where “Music Theory” (closely related to the practice of music analysis) functions as a discipline independent from “Musicology” and “Ethnomusicology.” As the debate has gained international attention, however, it remains an open question how, to what extent, and under what circumstances the US debates about music theory are pertinent in Europe: on the one hand, music theory and music analysis are practiced in ways that differ significantly from the American scholarly tradition, not just because Heinrich Schenker’s influence has been very limited, but also because theory and analysis are often conceived of as integrated subdisciplines of musicology rather than independent areas of research and education; on the other hand, we contend that questions of whiteness, Eurocentrism, race, gender, sexism, and more, are no less important in a European context, and that time is ripe for a fruitful scholarly discussion of these issues in music analysis, music theory, and related fields of music studies.

In this special issue we invite scholars and practitioners of music analysis to reflect upon the role of race, ethnicity, nation, class, gender, and sexuality in a European context. For the purposes of the special issue, we conceive of music analysis, widely, as a scholarly and pedagogical practice engaging with sounding musical material or notated music in the fields of music theory, music history, ethnomusicology, dance studies, and sound studies, as well as related interdisciplinary fields.

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Innovative artistic work is at the heart of this program. It leads to the production of new knowledge and serves as an independent contribution towards the development and opening up of the arts. It assumes a diversity of forms of knowledge and understanding. The program enables its graduates to generate independent artistic research work, which corresponds to international standards.

It is expected that within the program, new knowledge about specific issues in the arts is generated, the relevant artistic research is contextualised, and the resulting knowledge production is documented and communicated in a suitable way. The following play an essential role here (with differing project-specific weightings): the development of critical-systematic reflection on artistic practices, transdisciplinarity, collaboration, plurimediality, the diversity of forms of knowledge, and an awareness for issues of social relevance. Graduates are familiar with the discourses on gender, diversity and intersectionality which are relevant to artistic research, and can apply them in their practice.

Time Line:
Registration for admission exam: February 15th, 2021 to May 5th, 2021
Deadline for application: May 5th, 2021
Entry exam: June 23rd, 2021

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This open access report documents the activities, findings and recommendations of a research project undertaken by Dr Sarah Raine in partnership with Cheltenham Jazz Festival on their Keychange pledge to programme a 50/50 gender balanced schedule by 2022. It offers a critique of the Keychange quota element as it relates to jazz festivals, provides insight into the experiences of women musicians active on the UK jazz scene, and (based upon the model provided by Cheltenham) offers a range of recommendations for other music festivals who are interested in becoming a Keychange pledgee.

It draws upon interviews with festival staff – most notably with Emily Jones, Head of Programming (2018-2019, and Festival Manager 2013-2018) – and ten women musicians who performed at the 2019 festival. It provides an overview of the gender data from throughout the Festival’s twenty-three-year history, demonstrating the continued underrepresentation of women jazz musicians and a comparative lack of instrumentalists. Data from three other jazz festivals involved in this research project (Glasgow, Hull and Manchester) also highlight similar issues with both the Keychange interpretation of 50/50 (one woman on stage) and the jazz scene more generally.

This report was drafted before the COVID-19 pandemic, however a reflection upon gender inequality at jazz festivals going forward will be published later this year. This report is a culmination of collaborative work and testimony to partnerships between academia and industry. It was funded and supported by Midlands3Cities (M3C, Arts and Humanities Research Council) as part of their Creative Economy Engagement Fellowship scheme. The issues explored in this research project and resulting report will be the focus of a forthcoming special issue for Jazz Research Journal, expected in Summer 2021.

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Four33 is a podcast by IICSI graduate students Carey West and Stephen Donnelly, focusing on improvisation in daily life, particularly its value as a survival skill and tool for social change.

The podcast takes its name from John Cage’s composition 4’33”, which famously consists of three movements in which the musicians do not play, leaving the audience to listen to the performance space's ambient sounds. West and Donnelly note that 4-3-3 is also a soccer playbook position “known for its flexibility and responsiveness.”

While discussing issues of social importance (such as COVID-19, economic precarity, and civil rights), West and Donnelly also make space for play. They make use of creative interludes, sound experimentation, street-level interviews, and suggestions for the audience’s listening experience that bring their theoretical discussion into the sensual world.

The podcast’s first three episodes have already been released, with more to follow on a bi-weekly schedule. It is sure to be a valuable entry point for those who want an overview of critical improvisation studies and their application to everyday cultural and social practice.

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Klisala Harrison has spent two decades researching the use of music to promote human rights in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. In her new book, she examines the roles of gentrification, funding, and community organizations on music programs that promote human rights. Through research conducted at jams and music therapy sessions in churches, community centres, and health organizations, Harrison offers a discussion of music’s potential for capability-raising and the promotion of human rights among people experiencing poverty, while also engaging with its potential to undermine them. Her critical examination of the relationship between cultural practices and policy has wide-ranging implications and applicability.

Klisala Harrison holds a PhD in Ethnomusicology and Musicology from York University. She is currently Academy Research Fellow in Musicology in the Department of Philosophy, History, Culture and Art Studies at the University of Helsinki. Among other topics, she writes on applied ethnomusicology, Arctic Indigenous musical forms, and music and poverty relationships.

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Since ascending onto the world stage in the 1990s as one of the premier bassists and composers of his generation, William Parker has perpetually toured around the world and released over forty albums as a leader. He is one of the most influential jazz artists alive today. In Universal Tonality historian and critic Cisco Bradley tells the story of Parker’s life and music. Drawing on interviews with Parker and his collaborators, Bradley traces Parker’s ancestral roots in West Africa via the Carolinas to his childhood in the South Bronx, and illustrates his rise from the 1970s jazz lofts and extended work with pianist Cecil Taylor to the present day. He outlines how Parker’s early influences—Ornette Coleman, John Coltrane, Albert Ayler, and writers of the Black Arts Movement—grounded Parker’s aesthetic and musical practice in a commitment to community and the struggle for justice and freedom. Throughout, Bradley foregrounds Parker’s understanding of music, the role of the artist, and the relationship between art, politics, and social transformation. Intimate and capacious, Universal Tonality is the definitive work on Parker’s life and music.

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On Wednesday, April 3, 2019, Martin Guerpin, Lecturer in Musicology at the University of Evry-Val d'Essonne, organized a seminar devoted to one of the greatest French jazz violinists: the great Didier Lockwood (1956-2018) , who died suddenly one year earlier. The Epistrophy team, which had been invited to attend this event, was asked by the organizer of this event to publish some contributions, along with some unpublished texts, in a special issue that would be coordinated by the latter.

The Editorial Board states that the elaboration of this edition was a selective process that differs from the traditional scientific processes of the journal. On the one hand, the editorial board was asked to proofread the texts proposed by Martin Guerpin, instead of the double-blind peer review usually favored. On the other hand, we assume that some of the texts that make up this issue are more of a tribute, remembrance or tribune - the writing of these articles sometimes deviates from the scientific demands of disciplinary and academic research. This publication aims, in this respect, to restore the atmosphere and emotion that was expressed on April 3, 2019.

The Epistrophy team welcomes this special issue by extending the communications of the study day devoted to Didier Lockwood in the written form, and thus joins in the tribute paid to one of the greatest French jazz violinists of the 20th and 21st centuries.

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Jazz Education in Research and Practice explores diverse topics of jazz scholarship and its applications to pedagogy. The journal provides a forum for interaction and exchange between researchers and practitioners grounded in scholarship. It was developed by and is an extension of the Jazz Education Network Research Interest Group (JENRing) founded in 2014 under the umbrella of the Jazz Education Network (JEN). The journal aims to be inclusive of a wide range of perspectives, from musicology to cultural studies, from psychology to business, that can be applied in the field. In this respect, the editors particularly welcome articles that provide models, resources, and effective techniques for the teaching and learning of the art form.

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