From Tin Pan Alley to the Royal Schools of Music : the institutionalisation of classical and jazz music : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Sociology at Massey University [at Albany]

This thesis argues that the development of both classical and jazz music has been influenced by motivating conditions which have existed within differing and changing religious, social and political regimes. It argues also that the motivating conditions have been generated and regenerated by social forces and factors in society. Presently, a breakdown of these former modes of regulation, which created a gulf between classical and jazz music, is taking place as both genres come under one institutional administrative locus, the Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music. A focus has been made on new opportunities for the teaching and the learning of jazz piano music generally as presented by this institution. An implication is made that a break-down of attitudes, identified within social class, which previously kept classical and jazz music apart is taking place. This theoretically driven narrative locates both classical and jazz music against their respective historical backdrops. From this perspective, the ideas of various theorists have been drawn upon in order to make an understanding of how the motivating conditions are perpetuated. Attitudes, opinions and experiences from local classical and jazz music teachers and pupils, past and present, among others, are drawn on to solidify the theoretical arguments made in this thesis. Whilst an institutional wedding of classical and jazz music has taken place, philosophical artistic difference and intellectual development of each genre based on socialisation, it is argued, will remain

Race, identity and the meaning of Jazz in 1940s Britain

During the Blitz, on 8 March 1941, a bomb fell on the Café de Paris, an exclusive London nightclub, just as the Guianaian-born bandleader Ken “Snakehips” Johnson and his West Indian Dance Orchestra were in full swing. Johnson and saxophonist Dave ‘Baba’ Williams were killed in the blast, which also marked the demise of this successful group. The Orchestra was dedicated to reproducing emergent American big band jazz, but contemporary reports (if not extant recorded performances) also suggest the influence of calypso and rumba. Similarly, even prior to the arrival of the Empire Windrush, which is often characterised as heralding the start of mass immigration, a vivid mix of black music styles could be heard in London clubs. This diversity reflected cultural importations from the Empire and beyond, including jazz, which was being increasingly identified globally as black music. In Britain, black musicians were necessarily fluent in a variety of genres, irrespective of their particular cultural roots. Indeed, the members of the West Indian Dance Orchestra were not all from the Caribbean, or indeed America; the band included black musicians that had been resident in the UK for some time, more recent immigrants, and some members that were British-born. The pervasive hybridity of the London scene suggests a generalised perception of black music commensurate with blurring of the black identities of the musicians, which is perhaps characteristic of the black British experience. But also there is a sense in which jazz-based fusions, as demonstrated by the West Indian Dance Orchestra, were very particular responses to jazz reflecting the complexities of race and identity. Continued immigration and the corresponding representation of diverse national musics, as well as the emergence of indigenous popular styles, is indicative of the multicultural backdrop for the investigation of the complex and ever-changing meaning of jazz with respect to race and identity (particularly black British) in post-Second World War Britain. This chapter examines the subsequent careers of surviving members of the West Indian Dance Orchestra and proceeds to relate their experiences to those of contemporary jazz musicians in Britain, interrogating an apparent dichotomy of (imported, or closely derivative) jazz in Britain and (native, with original elements) British jazz. The chapter draws on interviews from the (UK) National Sound Archive’s ‘Oral History of Jazz in Britain’ collection and those conducted as part of the AHRC-funded project ‘What is Black British Jazz?’

Against all odds : the life and music of Michel Petrucciani : a thesis presented in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Philosophy at Massey University

Michel Petrucciani, jazz pianist and composer, was a major figure in the history of French jazz who achieved much critical and popular success in his short life span. In 1999 when he died at the age of 36, he was enough of a hero in his own country to warrant inclusion alongside Duke Ellington and Miles Davis in a series of postage stamps celebrating great jazz artists. He was one of only a handful of European jazz musicians to achieve success in the U.S. This thesis examines Petrucciani's life and music with particular emphasis placed on the evolution of his playing and composing styles through close analysis of selected piano solos and a range of compositions representing different periods of his career. An overview of his musical and personal life, as he battled with osteogenesis imperfecta, a rare bone disease that prevents growth to adult size, is also included, along with a study of the influence of pianist Bill Evans on Petrucciani's playing

[Review of] David G. Such. Avant-Garde Jazz Musicians: Performing Out There

The burgeoning scholarship on the avant-garde in jazz of the 1950s and 1960s still accounts for only a small number of scholarly jazz-related publications. Though the ascendance of interdisciplinary, cultural studies paradigms leave open many pathways to discussions of avant-garde jazz, David G. Such\u27s Avant-Garde Jazz Musicians incorporates little ofthe cultural criticism Ronald Radano offers in his equally new New Musical Figurations: Anthony Braxton’s Cultural Critique (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993). Such instead focuses multiply on what avant-garde musicians say about their music\u27s position a handful of topical devices which head chapters in the text. From considering Labels, an indispensable issue in music criticism -- since so much knowledge is vested in its nominal category -- Such discusses predecessors to the ”out jazz“ period from the mid-late 1950s onward, citing bebop\u27s revolutionary reputation and its figureheads as worthy precursors to such musicians as Cecil Taylor, Ornette Coleman, and many of the more recent player/composers whom Such interviews

Jazz Improvisation, the Body, and the Ordinary

What is one doing when one improvises music, as one does in jazz? There are two sorts of account prominent in jazz literature. The traditional answer is that one is organizing sound materials in the only way they can be organized if they are to be musical. This implies that jazz solos are to be interpreted with the procedures of written music in mind. A second, more controversial answer is offered in David Sudnow's pioneering account of the phenomenology of improvisation, Ways of the Hand. Sudnow claims that learning to improvise at the piano is concerned centrally with copying the bodily ways of one's mentors and finding how one's instructable hands and the keyboard come to answer to one another, so that "to define jazz ... is to describe the body's ways." But despite its greater sensitivity over the traditional account, Sudnow's account is flawed both as a description of how improvisatory skill is acquired and as a model for describing the interest of jazz. My critique of Sudnow compares his account to Augustine's account of learning language, and finds that Wittgenstein's criticisms of Augustine extend to Sudnow. I offer a third approach to understanding improvised music, one which treats the procedures of improvisation as derived from, and importantly at play in, our everyday actions