🎶 August News from the JEN Research Interest Group

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

Most of you are starting new school years, always an exciting time with lots of positive energy from new students and new projects. I’m excited to share that I have accepted the position of Professor for Artistic Research at the Jam Music Lab University in Vienna for the upcoming school year while I’m on leave from Indiana University. Some have already reached out for collaboration opportunities, the biggest projects will be the launch of a multi-media journal focusing on artistic research in jazz and popular music and a conference in February. The field of artistic research is fairly new and brings praxis and theory together through reflection and articulation of performance, composition, and pedagogy approaches. Contact me for further conversations.

Also exciting is the release of our co-edited Routledge Volume Jazz and Gender with 38 chapters and authors from four continents. These companions as well as the wealth of knowledge from articles in JAZZ (Jazz Education in Research and Practice) make meaningful additions to reading assignments in a variety of courses. All information, table of contents for the previous three issues, and subscription links are now available through Project Muse at this link. You can order a free inspection copy of Jazz and Gender here and also ask your libraries to acquire a copy. JEN members have access to reading the JAZZ articles for free on the JEN website, but also have access for a discounted yearly subscription to the print or electronic edition for $15 through the IU Press website.

The conference schedule is published, check it out and make plans to attend January 4-7 in Orlando. Volume 4 of JAZZ (Jazz Education in Research and Practice) is in the editorial process to be published by the 2023 JEN conference. The monthly series of webinars will continue September 9, EST with Lee Caplan - Jazz Historiography, Eurocentric Philosophy, and the Problem of Hegel and Aristotle and 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.

REQUEST: I’m working on a study mapping the impact of the Jazz Road Grant administered through South Arts and provided by the Doris Duke and Mellon Foundation on the economic, social, and geographic landscape of jazz for a chapter contribution to a “Jazz and Politics” Volume. If you have applied for any Jazz Road grant since 2019 please consider taking this quick survey.

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.

🎶 FREE WEBINAR 🎶

Jazz Historiography, Eurocentric Philosophy, & The Problem of Hegel & Aristotle
with Lee Caplan

Friday, September 9 • 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.

Joey DeFrancesco, who brought the richly enveloping sound of the Hammond B-3 organ roaring back into the jazz mainstream in the early 1990s, reigning as its preeminent ace for more than 30 years, died on Thursday. He was 51.

Gloria DeFrancesco, his wife and manager, announced his death on social media, but did not provide a cause.

Few jazz artists in any era have ever dominated the musical language and popular image of an instrument the way DeFrancesco did with the organ — as early as 17, when his head-turning debut was released on Columbia Records. He exhibited supreme technical command at the keyboard, reeling off ribbons of notes with his right hand. And he took full advantage of the sonic possibilities presented by an organ console, with its drawbars, switches and pedal board; his organ could lurch abruptly from an ambient hum to a sanctified holler, or change timbres and textures in the middle of a phrase. Like his idol and closest parallel, Jimmy Smith, he revealed new vistas on the instrument.

jaimie branch, the jazz composer and trumpeter, died on Monday night. The label International Anthem, which released branch’s music, confirmed the news in the below statement. She was 39.

A renowned improviser, jaimie branch played and recorded with multiple groups. She released her first solo album, Fly or Die, on International Anthem in 2017. In 2019, its sequel followed—Fly or Die II: Bird Dogs of Paradise. Earlier this year, her project Anteloper with Jason Nazary released the new album Pink Dolphins; it followed 2018’s Kudu. She also contributed to the new Eli Winter album and released an album in 2021 with the group Mofaya! In addition to her career as a solo artist, she worked with multiple indie rock bands, including TV on the Radio, Spoon, Local H, and Atlas Moth.

Fly or Die Live arrived in 2021, and it featured branch shouting political lyrics on “Prayer for Amerikkka Pt. 1 & 2.” In an interview with The Quietus’ Stewart Smith, she discussed the song’s story about a South American woman seeing violence on the U.S. border. “My mom is a social worker, and was dealing with the family that I talk about in “Prayer for Amerikkka Pt. 2,’” branch said. “One thing I want to make sure that people understand is that it wasn't a song about Trump. I mean, Biden is in power. The Democrat is in power now. We still have these prisons along the border. They’re still there.”

On her website, branch offered the following statement to describe her practice: “All the music that ever was and ever will be is here now. It exists in a cloud just above our heads and when we play, we pluck it out of the ether for a lil while before sending it back up.”

In April 2020 Barry Kernfeld and Howard Rye began an update to The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz. In the first year they have been working on the nearly one thousand musicians who passed away since the second edition was published, in many instances making extensive revisions drawn from the rich resources for jazz research that are now available on the internet. These updates are being posted monthly as 2021 and 2022 progress.

Editor in Chief
Barry Kernfeld is a freelance musicologist. He was editor-in-chief for two editions of The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz, and he wrote What to Listen for in Jazz on a commission from Yale University Press. Later, while working as an archivist in the Special Collections Library at the Pennsylvania State University, he published a case study of song bootlegging, The Story of Fake Books, and then a general history, Pop Song Piracy. In retirement, he has been the volunteer archivist at Historic Beverly (Massachusetts) and has now, once again, resumed his work on the Grove jazz dictionary.

Second Edition
Edited by Barry Kernfeld
The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz, 2nd edition (2002), is the largest, most comprehensive reference work on jazz ever published. Building on an explosion in jazz scholarship, the second edition is more than twice as large as the 1988 first edition, including pioneering coverage of jazz musicians in Japan, South Africa, the Caribbean, and elsewhere. This edition marks an unrivaled effort within the field of jazz research in accuracy, with detailed cross-checking and source comparison in the ever-changing realm of jazz information. With over 7,000 articles on every aspect of the field, from jazz groups, composers and arrangers to instruments, terms, record labels and venues, The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz is an essential tool for scholars, musicians and aficionados alike.

Early in his set at the Newport Jazz Festival on Sunday afternoon, Jason Moran left his station at the piano, stepping over to a microphone. "I've been thinking about what it means for people to gather and listen again, together," he said, waving an arm toward the sunbaked crowd at Fort Adams State Park. His words carried layers of connotation, rooted in the shared understanding of something precious lost and found.

That feeling ran throughout the 2022 Newport Jazz Festival, back in full after a pandemic disruption. (There was no in-person event in 2020, and a reduced capacity in 2021.) But this was also its first edition since the death of George Wein, who co-founded the fest in 1954, setting a standard for outdoor music presentation that he continued to refine and realign well into his 90s. So there were bittersweet notes even in the weekend's bounding exuberance, as festival veterans like bassist Ron Carter and composer-conductor Maria Schneider made their mark alongside newcomers like trumpeter Giveton Gelin and singer Samara Joy, who each made glowing, auspicious debuts.

Joni Mitchell's surprise performance at the Newport Folk Festival on Sunday is already becoming the stuff of legend. The unsuspecting crowd roared as the singer-songwriter stepped onto the stage in her first public performance since suffering a debilitating brain aneurysm in 2015.

And they continued to revel as the nine-time Grammy-winning singer regaled the lucky audience with many of her most beloved songs, including "Big Yellow Taxi" and "Both Sides Now," as well as a cover of "Summertime."

"The last time Joni performed with guitar in hand in front of a paying audience was 8,660 days ago, on her 55th birthday," according to Mitchell's website.

Many devoted fans never thought this day would come again after Mitchell's brain aneurysm – an abnormal swelling in an artery in the brain – which left her unable to speak or walk, much less play the guitar.

In an interview with CBS News following the show, the iconic singer, who is now 78, talked about losing the ability to speak and walk, or even get out of a chair. She described the experience of the last few years as "a return to infancy."

A few years ago, Zachary Woolfe, a New York Times critic and editor, posed a question: What are the five minutes or so that you would play for a friend to convince them to fall in love with classical music? How about Mozart? Or the violin? Or opera?

Over the course of more than 25 entries, dozens of writers, musicians, critics, scholars and other music lovers attempted to answer, sharing their passions with readers and one another.

Now, we’re shifting the focus to jazz — and what better place to start than with Duke Ellington? A nonpareil composer, pianist and bandleader, he arrived in New York from Washington, D.C., just as the Harlem Renaissance was getting underway; soon, the Duke Ellington Orchestra had become the soundtrack to an epoch. He grew to be a Black American icon on the national stage, and then an ambassador for the best of American culture around the world. Jazz’s status as a global music has a lot to do with Ellington: specifically, his skill as a leader, collaborator and spokesman, who rarely failed to remind his audience, “We love you madly.”

Renowned international music conservatory Manhattan School of Music (MSM) has announced that critically acclaimed trumpeter and educator Ingrid Jensen has been appointed Dean of the School’s prestigious Jazz Arts division, effective immediately. In July 2020, following the departure of former Associate Dean and Director of Jazz Arts Stefon Harris and in the midst of the early, lockdown days of COVID-19, Ms. Jensen – who had joined the MSM faculty two years earlier – assumed leadership of the jazz division on an interim basis. Now, having successfully led the division for two years, Ms. Jensen, one of the most gifted jazz trumpeters of her generation, steps into the role of Dean.

“Ingrid’s superb and present leadership as Interim Dean of MSM’s jazz division over the past two years – during which the international global health crisis made for such uncertainty – galvanized faculty and students and fostered an environment characterized by generosity of spirit and artistic excellence,” says MSM President James Gandre. “We are absolutely thrilled that she has accepted the role of Dean of Jazz Arts.”

Ms. Jensen, who was appointed to the MSM Jazz Arts faculty in 2018 and became the division’s Interim Associate Dean and Director in 2020 (and subsequently Interim Dean), has ably demonstrated her strong commitment to building on MSM Jazz Arts’ vision of excellence, community, and diversity. Balancing a deep range of artistry that has brought her to the front ranks of jazz performance globally and an extensive career as educator, she is a strong role model for both students and colleagues.

“I am absolutely thrilled to be taking on this new role at MSM,” says Ms. Jensen. “I joined MSM’s faculty at the beginning of the institution’s centennial year. Four years later, it is a singular honor and privilege to lead MSM’s legendary jazz division. I look forward to welcoming the incoming class later this summer!”

Monnette Sudler, a virtuoso guitarist who straddled the post-bop mainstream and a searching yet rooted avant-garde, earning an exalted stature in her native Philadelphia, died on Sunday morning at her home in the city’s Germantown – Penn Knox neighborhood. She was 70.
Her son Erik Honesty said the cause was cancer. Sudler had also suffered from a serious lung disease, idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, which led to a double lung transplant in 2013.

Sudler was a composer and a singer as well as a guitarist, but it was her brisk and super-articulate style on the instrument that forged her reputation. She favored a clean tone and rhythmically assertive phrasing, in the mode of precursors like George Benson. But emerging as she did during the 1970s, a period of seismic upheaval in improvised music, she made her first major impression in the ranks of a spirit-minded free-funk group called Sounds of Liberation.

The ensemble, which also included saxophonist Byard Lancaster and vibraphonist Khan Jamal, released one album on a shoestring label, earning cult status in the rare-groove discourse. A 2010 reissue brought the band’s achievement back into wider circulation, helped by a resurgence of interest in ‘70s Black expression and so-called “spiritual jazz.” A previously unissued live recording — Untitled [Columbia University 1973], released by Dogtown Records in 2019 — further burnished the legend, with Sudler duly credited for her integral role in the music.

The Jazz Road Grants administered through South Arts and provided by the Doris Duke and Mellon Foundation have supported tours and projects by jazz artists over the past three years. I am currently mapping the cultural, economic, political, and geographical impact of this grant to be published as a chapter contribution in the upcoming Oxfort Companion Jazz and Politics. If you have applied for any Jazz Road Grant, would you please take 10 minutes and complete this survey ? If you know anyone who has applied, please share this callout with them, I’m hoping to reach as many applicants as possible, including those who were not recipients.

The Journal of Music Research Online (JMRO) is a freely accessible, peer-reviewed journal for the publication of scholarly research in music published by The University of Adelaide. It has a distinguished international editorial board, a broad scope of music research and only publishes research which is of the highest international standard. JMRO offers authors: • short submission to publication time, • no page limits, • the inclusion of audio and video samples, high quality images and music scores where those items enhance the presentation of the research, • publication of articles as soon as they are ready.

JMRO is now calling for English language articles of the highest international scholarly standards in areas including, but not limited to, Composition, Early Music, Ethnomusicology, Gender Studies in Music, Interdisciplinary Studies in Music, Music Education, Music Technologies, Musicology, Music Theory and Analysis, Performance Practice, Popular Music and Opera, Ludomusicology. Articles in other areas considered to be appropriate by the managing editor will also be published.

This two-day symposium will bring together interdisciplinary scholars and interpreters of music in rethinking how musical programs of the past might be meaningfully reimagined in the present.
Contributors are invited to consider how contemporary scholarship offers new possibilities for staging musical concerts in ways that innovatively weave together our musical past with our musical present. Efforts to decolonize music programs, recuperate Indigenous song practices, critique canon formation, and engage with historically-inspired performance practices, are just a few approaches at play in this expansive arena of cultural work.

We welcome individual and collaborative presentations in a range of formats, including proposals for spoken papers, lecture-recitals, themed roundtables, and workshops.
The symposium is an initiative of the ARC Discovery Project ‘Hearing the Music of Early NSW, 1788-1860’ (2021-23)

Location and dates
This symposium will take place in person at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, University of Sydney on the 25 and 26 of November 2022.

There is also the option to attend and/or participate in this symposium online via Zoom.

Can young children play improvised jazz together? The answer provided by Guro Graven Johansen is an emphatic yes. While jazz is often constructed as an adult music genre, children are arguably among the most active and receptive of musical learners. The private Norwegian learning center Improbasen offers beginner’s instrumental tuition within jazz improvisation for children aged 7-15.To a very great exten, this is a book about one man;s approach to jazz pedagogy. Johansen thoroughly describes jazz teacher Odd Andre Elveland’s methods for instructing children in jazz improvisation. Johansen’s ethnographic study of the teaching and learning at Improbasen highlights several features, spanning from the micro-interactions within lessons to international concert tours and touching on critique of traditional jazz pedagogy as well as on the socially transformative potential of gender inclusivity.

Tomasz Stańko is arguably the greatest jazz musician Poland has ever produced. His career spanned almost 60 years until his death in 2018. A visionary trumpeter and composer, a protégé of Krzysztof Komeda and a colleague of musicians from Poland, Sweden, Norway, Britain, Cuba and the USA, his impact on jazz internationally was profound, proving that jazz was not exclusively an American art form but truly world-wide. In 2014 he was awarded the Polytika Passport in Poland, the Prix du Musicien Européan in Paris and the Preis der deutschen Schallplattenkritik.

The book is a no-holds-barred extended interview with broadcaster Rafał Księżyk originally published in Polish by Wydawnictwo Literackie.

The forceful music that rolled out of Muscle Shoals in the 1960s and 1970s shaped hits by everyone from Wilson Pickett and Aretha Franklin to the Rolling Stones and Paul Simon. Christopher M. Reali's in-depth look at the fabled musical hotbed examines the events and factors that gave the Muscle Shoals sound such a potent cultural power. Many artists trekked to FAME Studios and Muscle Shoals Sound in search of the sound of authentic southern Black music—and at times expressed shock at the mostly white studio musicians waiting to play it for them. Others hoped to draw on the hitmaking production process that defined the scene. Reali also chronicles the overlooked history of Muscle Shoals's impact on country music and describes the region's recent transformation into a tourism destination.

Multifaceted and informed, Music and Mystique in Muscle Shoals reveals the people, places, and events behind one of the most legendary recording scenes in American history.

The Routledge Companion to Jazz and Gender identifies, defines, and interrogates the construct of gender in all forms of jazz, jazz culture, and education, shaping and transforming the conversation in response to changing cultural and societal norms across the globe. Such interrogation requires consideration of gender from multiple viewpoints, from scholars and artists at various points in their careers. This edited collection of 38 essays gathers the diverse perspectives of contributors from four continents, exploring the nuanced (and at times controversial) construct of gender as it relates to jazz music, in the past and present, in four parts:
Historical Perspectives
Identity and Culture
Society and Education
Policy and Advocacy

Acknowledging the art form’s troubled relationship with gender, contributors seek to define the construct to include all possible definitions—not only female and male—without binary limitations, contextualizing gender and jazz in both place and time. As gender identity becomes an increasingly important consideration in both education and scholarship, The Routledge Companion to Jazz and Gender provides a broad and inclusive resource of research for the academic community, addressing an urgent need to reconcile the construct of gender in jazz in all its forms.