Collaborative learning experiences in the university jazz/creative music ensemble: Student perspectives on instructional communication

While the ensemble is a ubiquitous learning environment within jazz education, opportunities to learn through engagement in ensemble performances and industry-level recording opportunities are rare classroom environments tertiary jazz music institutions offer. This qualitative study examines jazz performance contexts within an Australian tertiary music course, exploring students’ learning experience spanning three diverse collaborative projects across nine months. Phenomenological analysis explores the instructional relationship outlining connection between the student and instruction, the subject matter that is taught, and the connection between the student and the teacher as master improviser. Findings outline substantive teacher crafting of learning, relationship building and learning experiences garnered from interpersonal learning relationships, and the application of content with pedagogy that aims to build a positive learning climate between improvising teachers and their students. The author contends that a phenomenological perspective can highlight this diversity and emphasize effective interpersonal strategies and ensemble pedagogies that enhance student learning and potentially enculturate richer and more sophisticated musicianship in students and their developing creative abilities.

Jazz without Boundaries

This chapter looks at the spread of jazz—both geographically and institutionally. Almost from the start, jazz seemed destined to travel beyond its birthplace in New Orleans, but the pace of that expansion has accelerated in recent decades. Europe, which once looked to the United States for jazz role models, is increasingly self-sufficient, and other regions are also developing strong, homegrown jazz scenes. At the same time, jazz has broken down other barriers, entering schools and universities, and enjoying the support of influential nonprofit organizations such as Jazz at Lincoln Center. This shift has led to the rise of a new generation of musicians who have learned their craft in formal jazz education programs, and in many instances also teach at them, but also operate with fluency in the world of commercial music and popular culture. Artists discussed in this chapter include Brad Mehldau, Regina Carter, Esbjörn Svensson (and his band e.s.t.), and Joshua Redman.

Bob Wilber, the Westchester Kid: White Privilege and Perspectives on Jazz Belonging

In Bob Wilber’s Music Was Not Enough, the multi-instrumentalist and bandleader offers a detailed account of his experience in New York during the mid-1940s as a student and protégé of the renowned New Orleans musician Sidney Bechet and the effect of that experience on his life and career. While Wilber’s description of his jazz education with Bechet and his subsequent professional career reveals his rich immersion in New Orleans and East Coast traditional and swing jazz communities, the colorblind lens through which he filters these experiences serves to deemphasize, or even negate, the significance of race in them. This chapter contrasts Wilber’s privilege and apparent distance from New Orleans’ jazz culture with Bechet’s insistence on the significance of his Creole identity to the shaping of his musical and cultural persona.

Anyone Can Improvise

The concept of improvisation and the “Jazz Model” for Entrepreneurship as a gathering of creative minds with the goal of creating a new outcome is frequently used in the entrepreneurship literature. Especially the unique setting of a jazz jam session exemplifies a successful model of group creativity. Herzig and Baker (2014) identified seven factors that guide jam sessions and Belitski and Herzig (2018) transferred and exemplified these factors to various business entrepreneurship models. This case study traces the entrepreneurial efforts of Jamey Aebersold, David Baker, and Jerry Coker, the ABC’s of jazz education who developed the foundation for teaching materials and curricula worldwide. Furthermore, this case study demonstrates the entrepreneurial mindset of these three innovators as a result of their training in the jazz idiom and suggests strategies for entrepreneurship education.

Giving voice to jazz singers’ experiences of flow in improvisation

Jazz instrumentalists’ experiences of improvisation have informed psychological research on a range of topics including flow in improvisation, yet there is scant evidence of jazz singers’ improvising experiences. Using interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA), this study investigated the experiences of three professional Australian jazz singers who improvise extensively in their performance practice: How do these singers experience improvisation? IPA of semi-structured interviews with the singers resulted in two superordinate themes which both related to the flow state: (a) singers experienced flow when improvisation “went well”; (b) singers experienced flow as meaningful—flow provided singers with both the freedom to express the self and the opportunity to contribute to something beyond the self. These findings reveal a new context for flow experiences. Implications for vocal jazz education and practice are discussed.

The Reception of American Jazz in Japan: An Outline of Issues

The following article presents the history of Japanese jazz, from the first musical contacts to its contemporary successes and problems of the jazz music market. An important role in the development and evolution of jazz in Japan (even before the post-war US occupation of that country) was played by the presence of American military forces in the Philippines, which, as an American-dependent territory, maintained cultural contacts with the United States, where jazz had been born at the beginning of the 20th century and became one of the most popular forms of music. Apart from contact with Filipino musicians, who were the first source of jazz education for the Japanese, the rise of jazz cafés (jazzu-kissa) was also important for the development of jazz in the Land of the Cherry Blossom. The cafés played a huge role in generating interest in jazz and shaping musical tastes. The article also shows the influence of jazz on the formation of a modern, American-type lifestyle among the Japanese middle-class. In addition, the article discusses the complex issue of the authenticity of Japanese jazz in relation to American jazz and the role of world-famous Japanese musicians, such as Toshiko Akiyoshi, in overcoming stereotypes. The aim of the article is to demonstrate the universality and at the same time the local character of contemporary Japanese jazz as well as the distinguishing features of jazz in Japan.