🎶 February News from the JEN Research Interest Group

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

Submissions for the 2023 conference will open in April. Article submissions for Jazz Education in Research and Practice Volume 4 are open now until May 1 - info and submission guidelines here. Feel free to contact me if you have questions about how and what to submit. There are options from book reviews, to essays on a teaching/ theory/ history topic, to full-blown research articles. Publishing in a peer-reviewed journal provides credits for promotion, job searches, and of course contributes to the knowledge base in the field. Volume 3 is now available, the Table of Contents is below and of course Volume 1 and 2 also include a wealth of articles. Please consider including some of them in your courses this semester and access or order copies through your libraries. As a JEN member, you can claim a discounted yearly subscription for $15 if you order directly from IU Press here and follow the subscription links. And of course, as a full JEN member you have access to reading all editions on the JEN website for free.

We have several new initiatives in consideration for the JEN Research Interest Group. More information on options to get involved coming very soon. If you’d like to provide input for possible initiatives, please take the survey.

Articles

Martin Norgaard and Ute Römer

Patterns in Music: How Linguistic Corpus Analysis Tools Can Be Used to Illuminate Central Aspects of Jazz Improvisation

Josiah Boornazian

Mary Lou Williams and the Role of Gender in Jazz: How Can Jazz Culture Respect Women’s Voices and Break Down Barriers for Women in Jazz while Simultaneously Acknowledging Uncomfortable Histories?

Case Studies

Paul N. Roth

Teaching Jazz, Teaching Justice, and the Blackness of Don Cherry’s Global Communion

Benjamin Nichols

Melodic Rhythms and Intervals in Selected Works of Jerry Bergonzi

Reflective Essays

Lee Caplan

Jazz Historiography, Eurocentric Philosophy, and the Problem of Hegel and Aristotle

Sergio Pamies Rodríguez
Some Remarks on the Pedagogy of Advanced Jazz Improvisation in the 2020s

Patrick Brown
Connections between Speech Acquisition and the Jazz Language

Quick Hits

David Detweiler

Treatments of the ii-V7-I Chord Progression in Jazz Improvisation: An Analysis of Phrases Used by Hank Mobley, John Coltrane, Sonny Rollins, and Dexter Gordon

Fumi Tomita

Teaching Afro-Cuban Rhythms to Enhance the Jazz Curriculum

Reviews

Sergio Pamies Rodríguez

Experiencing Chick Corea: A Listener’s Companion

The monthly series of webinars will continue in March 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.

Here is the upcoming schedule, all webinars are at 3pm EST:

March 4 • Patrick Brown “Connections Between Speech Acquisition and The Jazz Language”
April 1 (no joke) • Martin Norgaard “Patterns in Music: How Linguistic Corpus Analysis Tools Can Be Used to Illuminate Central Aspects of Jazz Improvisation”
May 6 • Jeffrey Benatar “A Method for teaching interaction in small jazz ensembles
June 3 • Paul Roth “Teaching Jazz, Teaching Justice, blackness of Don Cherry's global communion”

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
Editor, JAZZ (Jazz Education in Research and Practice)

🎶 FREE WEBINAR 🎶

Melodic Rhythms & Intervals in Selected Works of Jerry Bergonzi

Friday, March 4 • 3pm ET

Zoom (Members) & Facebook Live (Non-members)

Join Dr. Benjamin Nichols, Assistant Professor of Saxophone at the University of Nebraska at Omaha, for this live webinar on the music of Jerry Bergonzi (1947- ), a late-twentieth and twenty-first century jazz saxophonist and composer, often associated with the 1970’s New York Loft Scene.

Through the use of specific rhythmic, intervallic, and harmonic shapes, Bergonzi uses compositional techniques inspired by John Coltrane, Olivier Messiaen, and Arnold Schoenberg. Bergonzi’s compositions “It’s the Same,” “Philapino,” “Ryvim with Ding,” “Awake,” “Do It to Do It,” “Ellwood,” “New in the Neighborhood,” “Czarology,” “Cadiz,” are studied. Through formal analysis this presentation gives insight into Bergonzi’s compositional methods used in the selected pieces. This presentation supplies research that answers two questions: What are Bergonzi’s compositional techniques? What makes his compositions compelling and unique?

Plus a Q & A with the live Zoom audience.

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.

Ronnie Scott’s Jazz Club has been an enduring beacon of musical genius in London. Any self-respecting jazzhead had to make the pilgrimage to the venue during its 1960s heyday. Musicians, too: Miles Davis and Ella Fitzgerald played it, along with Buddy Rich and Dizzy Gillespie.

Scott, one of its benevolent owners, was as hallowed as the establishment itself, but remained a somewhat mysterious figure throughout his life. A charming tenor saxophonist with a warm demeanor and great comedic timing, he also had a gambling addiction and endured bouts of depression. Even those closest to him didn’t feel like they connected with him.

“He was a very hard person to know,” Paul Pace, the club’s current music bookings coordinator, said in an interview. “He was a very quiet, private man.

Scott died in 1996 at the age of 69. The venue he opened with a fellow saxophonist, Pete King, is still holy ground among jazz supper clubs in the United Kingdom, and “Ronnie’s,” a new documentary getting a wider release in the United States this week, offers a multidimensional view of Scott and the nightclub through the perspective of journalists, friends and musicians who knew him — and a host of live performance footage. The film celebrates how the spot with narrow hallways and a tiny stage housed all sorts of grand performances, including Jimi Hendrix’s last gig before his 1970 death. And it reveals that the secret of the venue’s success largely was Scott, himself, who drew in patrons like he was an old friend who just happened to know the best players of his era.

CREATIVE INTERACTIONS 2022

Thursday 26th – Friday 27th May 2022

University of Music and Performing Arts, Munich, Germany

Organising Committee: Andrea Sangiorgio, Wolfgang Mastnak, Christa Coogan, Claudia Schmidtpeter

Nurturing learner creativity is a key aim in education and in music education.
The conference Creative Interactions 2022 will gather together researchers, teachers and students to reflect on, share and celebrate valuable ideas about how we can foster young people’s creativity in and through music and the arts.

A rich range of presentations and practical workshops will focus on three basic aspects:
a) learners’ creative agency and identity,
b) educators’ own creativity in devising imaginative approaches to make learning more meaningful, and
c) pedagogic strategies that support the development of collaborative creative abilities in music and the arts.

The theme concerns diverse areas and educational contexts: early childhood, primary and secondary education, higher education, but also instrumental tuition, out-of-school contexts, special education, etc.

Among the relevant aspects:
cultural and educational notions of creativity
the design of creative processes in the classroom: planning for creativity
observing, understanding and guiding the development of learners’ creative skills and attitudes
the role of creativity in music education: enhancing the little c creativity of children, students, beginners, and non-professionals
creativity and artistry: developing an aesthetic sensibility and integrating perception, cognition, emotion and artistic action
interdisciplinary connections: music, movement/dance and beyond
psychological and cultural aspects as well as therapeutic implications of creative processes in education

Due to the continuing challenges posed by the pandemic situation, the Conference will be organised as a hybrid event, i.e. both online via a digital platform and face-to-face at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Munich (face-to-face attendance policies will abide by the University regulations).

In whatever form you will want to participate, we are looking forward to enjoying two days of inspiring presentations, participatory workshops and concerts with you!

The seventh Rhythm Changes Conference, Jazz Then & Now, will take place at the Conservatorium van Amsterdam, the Netherlands, from 25 to 28 August 2022. This conference marks the twelfth anniversary of the Rhythm Changes project.

Keynotes:
• Lucas Dols, double bassist and founder Sounds of Change Foundation: Opening lecture
• Rhythm Changes Then & Now: Plenary panel on twelve years of the project
• Prof. Charles Hersch, Cleveland State University: Closing address

We invite submissions for Jazz Then & Now, a four-day multidisciplinary conference bringing together leading researchers across the arts and humanities and others interested in jazz studies. The event will feature academic papers, panels, and roundtables.

Jazz is an urgent music that responds to or addresses contemporary crises. Its history is inseparable from struggles over civil rights, racial and gender identities, cultural politics, social hierarchies, artistic significance, and new technologies. The music has defined itself through debates around inclusion and exclusion, exemplified by iconic phrases such as ‘This Is Our Music’ (Ornette Coleman) or ‘What Jazz Is – and Isn’t’ (Wynton Marsalis). The sounds of jazz have often been heard as strident, edgy, unexpected, demandingly presentist – as urgent. Or is jazz perhaps more about its ‘then’ than its ‘now’ once we move outside circles of scholars, musicians, and fans? Jazz Then & Now seeks to critically explore how this sense (or absence?) of urgency plays out in jazz and how it contributes to our most compelling contemporary debates.

We welcome papers addressing the conference theme from multiple perspectives, including cultural studies, musicology, cultural theory, music analysis, jazz history, media studies, and practice-based research. Within the general theme of Jazz Then & Now, we have identified several sub-themes. Where relevant, please clearly specify which sub-theme you are referring to in your proposal.

Editor
Iain A. Taylor, University of the West of Scotland

“What we had thought to be an object was revealed as what I would call
a thing. And the thing about things, if you will, is that far from standing before us as a fait accompli, complete in itself, each is a ‘going on’—or better, a place where several goings on become entwined.” (Ingold, 2010: 96)

For this issue of Riffs, we invite proposals which explore the materiality of popular music, and the forms, formats, and practices which constitute it. We invite pieces of work which consider popular music, and popular music culture, as a thing, a ‘going on’ or, better yet, as a place
where several goings on become entwined.

We are interested in submissions which relate to (but are not limited to):
Popular music, materiality and memory
The materiality of musical instruments
Listening as a material culture
Material metaphors in digital music spaces
Ecologies of musical materiality
The materiality of obsolescence (or, the obsolescence of materiality)
Popular music materialities as exclusionary and inclusionary
Issues of materiality and environmental sustainability in the music industries
Music materialities of journeys and traveling

We welcome all creative responses to this prompt, from all individuals and collectives, from any sector or discipline. Feel free to include written, visual, and/or musical elements and to propose work that emerges from collaborations between writers, poets, musicians, composers, and visual artists (etc).

Deadline: 27th March 2022 - proposal deadline: to include a title and 300-word abstract / summary, your name(s), a short bio and contact email.

We wanted to remind all of our readers that we are accepting submissions for Critical Studies in Improvisation / Études critiques en improvisation (CSI/ÉCI)—IICSI’s open-access, peer-reviewed, electronic, academic journal on improvisation, community, and social practice—on an ongoing basis for our non-special topic issues.

While improvisational music has historically been analyzed within specific musical disciplines, what distinguishes the research profiled in CSI/ÉCI is its emphasis on improvisation as a site for the analysis of social practice. We contend that improvisation demands shared responsibility for participation in community, an ability to negotiate differences, and a willingness to accept the challenges of risk and contingency. Yet improvisation is a contested term. Its cultural significance is in dispute both in the academy and in the eyes of the general public. CSI/ÉCI seeks to reveal the complex structures of improvisational practices and to develop an enriched understanding of the social, political, and cultural functions those practices play.

We are particularly interested in historically and contextually specific articles that interrogate improvisation as a social and musical practice, and that assess how innovative performance practices play a role in developing new, socially responsive forms of community building across national, cultural, and artistic boundaries.

CSI/ÉCI publishes twice a year. We accept submissions of papers, interviews, and book reviews on an ongoing basis throughout the year. Authors should carefully review the Online Submission and Author Guidelines before submitting their work.

To get a sense of our journal, you can explore our most recent issue (Vol. 14, No. 2-3): “Improvisation, Musical Communities, and the COVID-19 Pandemic.”

The Royal Musical Association Research Chronicle is seeking contributions for a special issue on Music and COVID-19. The special issue is guest edited by Drs. Larry Zazzo and Adam Behr, of Newcastle University. The issue concerns how the making, distribution, teaching and researching of music have been altered (either negatively, or positively) by the effects of the pandemic. While recognizing the struggles faced by the creative economy, the editors also wish to make space for discussions of how new configurations have emerged, sharpening the digital turn in music education and the rapid adoption of new working modalities. The issue aims to provide an expansive overview of the pandemic’s effect on music, not only from the perspective of the musician, teacher, or scholar, but the audience member as well.

The editors encourage traditional articles, but also non-traditional submissions, such as diaries, reflections/predictions, and non-textual creative output, such as archived performances, compositions and field recordings.
Preliminary submissions are being accepted in the form of either a 350-word (maximum) abstract, or a 5-minute video/audio file with 350-word (maximum) commentary, until March 21, 2022.

Deadline: March 21, 2022

Dear colleagues and supporters,

You are warmly invited to attend an online panel discussion from Munich, which forms part of the events of the ‘Musical Theatre and All That Jazz’ AHRC research network.

In order to explore the relationships between musical theatre and jazz in the German-speaking world, we have invited an esteemed panel of experts to reflect on interplays between forms from their individual perspectives: Marianne Larsen is a musical performer and teacher at Munich’s prestigious Theatre academy; Josef E. Köpplinger is an experienced director of musicals and Intendant of Munich’s much loved Gärtnerplatztheater; and Lars Hansen is a highly versatile bass player and teacher who has worked in jazz ensembles as much as musical theatre orchestra pits.

Join us on Wednesday 16 March at 3pm (GMT) on Zoom to discuss similarities and differences, synergies and conflicts, love affairs and animosities between jazz and the musical from perspectives on, in front of, and below the stage!

This event is organised in collaboration with Prof. Dr. David Roesner (Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München)

Date: 16 March 2022

Time: 3pm – 5pm (GMT)

Title: Musical Theatre and Jazz – Intersections in Directing, Training, Performing.
A panel discussion with Josef E. Köpplinger, Marianne Larsen, and Lars Hansen

Zoom Link:

https://www.google.com/url?q=https://port-ac-uk.zoom.us/j/84776776106?pwd%3DSFMxeWdHTzJ4bzdSY1dKOVRjLzl3QT09&sa=D&source=calendar&ust=1645875326300708&usg=AOvVaw3ecf6F92-o-6TGa-GwgMCr
Join Zoom Meeting
ID: 84776776106
Passcode: 690188

We do hope you will join us on 16 March via the above link. If you have any queries please email: mtjazz@port.ac.uk

With best wishes,
All at the “Musical Theatre and All That Jazz” AHRC Research Network

The organizing committee has decided to extend the deadline for proposals to this year's Issues in Contemporary Jazz Conference to FRIDAY MARCH 4 at 11:59 pm EST. The conference will take place virtually on April 30, 2022.
Proposals are invited in the following formats:

Individual Papers (20 mins + 10 mins Q&A - 250-word abstract). (Up to 2 pages for figures, tables, diagrams, and bibliographic information are optional as needed to clarify and contextualize the proposal, which will not be counted against the 250-word limit).
Joint papers (2 speakers max. Same format as above).
Themed Sessions (3 papers totaling 90 mins - 250 words per paper + 250 words outlining rationale for the session).
Roundtable Discussions (90 mins, max. 6 speakers. Up to 750 words outlining the format, content and rationale for the session).\
Prerecorded Performances with Live Q&A (no longer than 30 mins). Sample of proposed performance should be no longer than 5 minutes.
Composers Forum (composers shall have 20 mins to present a composition with score and recording available prior to Conference). Composers should submit a 250-word description of the piece, as well as the score and parts of their composition within a single PDF. Recordings preferred, but not required.

Proposals should include:

Title for the paper, session, performance, and/or composition.
An abstract with identifying information about the author removed as a PDF attachment.
Name, contact details, and affiliation of the speaker(s)/performer(s)/composer in the body of the email.
In the case of themed sessions and round-table sessions: the panel convener.

Please send proposals to ICJConference2022@gmail.com. Feel free to reach out to the organizers with any questions. We hope to see you at the conference!

Deadline: March 4, 2022 @ 11:59 ET

Language production involves action sequencing to produce fluent speech in real time, placing a computational burden on working memory that leads to sequencing biases in production. Here we examine whether these biases extend beyond language to constrain one of the most complex human behaviors: music improvisation. Using a large corpus of improvised solos from eminent jazz musicians, we test for a production bias observed in language termed easy first—a tendency for more accessible sequences to occur at the beginning of a phrase, allowing incremental planning later in the same phrase. Our analysis shows consistent evidence of easy first in improvised music, with the beginning of musical phrases containing both more frequent and less complex sequences. The findings indicate that expert jazz musicians, known for spontaneous creative performance, reliably retrieve easily accessed melodic sequences before creating more complex sequences, suggesting that a domain-general sequencing system may support multiple forms of complex human behavior, from language production to music improvisation.

Functional Network Connectivity During Jazz Improvisation
One of the most complex forms of creativity is musical improvisation where new music is produced in real time. Brain behavior during music production has several dimensions depending on the conditions of the performance. The expression of creativity is suspected to be different whether novel ideas must be externalized using a musical instrument or can be imagined internally. This study explores whole brain functional network connectivity from fMRI data during jazz music improvisation compared against a baseline of prelearned score performance. Given that creativity might be affected by external execution, another dimension where musicians imagine or vocalize the music was also tested. We found improvisation was associated with a state of weak connectivity necessary for attenuated executive control network recruitment associated with a feeling of “flow” allowing unhindered musical creation. In addition, elicited connectivity for sensorimotor and executive control networks is not different whether musicians imagine or externalize (through vocalization) musical performance.

A third issue titled "Feedback" has just been released in ECHO, a journal of music, thought and technology. The guest editor is Adam Pultz Melbye (composer, musician and PhD-candidate at Queen's University's Sonic Arts Research Centre).

Financial flash crashes, Jimi Hendrix’s rendition of The Star-Spangled Banner, thermostats, the Gulf Stream, Watt’s steam engine, global warming, artificial neural networks. In all of these phenomena feedback is a driving force, creating the possibility for adaption, equilibrium and learning, but also setting the stage for surprising, nonlinear—and in some cases—catastrophic behaviours. As a core component of cybernetics, feedback processes are at play in theory of architecture (Minati and Collen, 2009), management (Beer 1961), robotics (Brooks, 1999), and anthropology (Bateson, 2000) while in the sonic and performative arts, it has propelled seminal works ranging from Onkyo (Nakamura, 2013) and ambient music (Eno, 1975) to sound art (Lucier, 1997).

The new issue includes peer-reviewed multimedia articles, as well as artist statements, by Virgile Abela, Øyvind Brandtsegg, Jaehoon Choi, Nicolas Collins, Eugenia Demeglio, Agostino Di Scipio, Petra Dubach, Robert Ek, Scott McLaughlin, You Nakai, David Novak, Mattias Petersson, Thanos Polymeneas-Liontiris, Adam Pultz Melbye, Dario Sanfilippo, Ricardo Thomasi, Mario van Horrik and Marcus Whale.