Expanding the Canvas

Throughout his career Nat Cole was always eager to try new things; even when he had perfected the King Cole Trio into one of the greatest jazz ensembles of all time, he was never content to let anything become formulaic. He got an indication of where his future would lie with his enormous unprecedented success with two new ballads, “For Sentimental Reasons” and “The Christmas Song.” He also made his formal concert hall debut at this time, in theaters and also classical music venues, including Carnegie Hall. By the end of 1947, changes in both his professional and personal lives meant that his first wife, Nadine Robinson, and his musical partner, Oscar Moore, were out of his life.

Jazz Ensembles

This chapter acknowledges the growth of jazz ensembles in instrumental music education and the value of preparing future music educators to teach jazz. It situates jazz pedagogy in an authentic, experiential framework, emphasizing the important role of the rhythm section and what it means to be culturally literate through improvisation. Topics such as jazz theory, swing feel, and jazz styles are examined. The chapter also discusses a paradigm shift in the conceptualization of music education, whereby an interpreter-performer perspective is replaced by a creator-performer perspective. Musicians’ roles as composers and improvisers in the jazz idiom suggest learning this art form is relevant for developing creative performers who may then be able to participate in a variety of other musical cultures.

Arranging for School Jazz Ensembles

School music teachers have a unique opportunity to cultivate creativity, yet teachers often report spending little time on composing, improvising, and arranging music. This chapter demystifies the process of writing for a school jazz ensemble so that arranging becomes a part of the culture in a school music program. Jazz arranging in a school setting can foster an intrinsic desire among students to create music, allow for a variety of instrumentation best suited for the school, accommodate nontraditional learners, differentiate for the strengths and weaknesses of the ensemble, allow the teacher to assess knowledge through performance-based activities, and increase the school’s library of repertoire without breaking the budget. This chapter explores (a) considerations before arranging, (b) writing for rhythm sections, (c) writing for winds, and (d) basic harmonization techniques.

Walking Woman

This chapter looks at Bley's first few years in New York. She was most likely eighteen years old when she arrived in the city but it is not clear exactly when Bley first got there. New to the city, she slept temporarily in Grand Central Station and then paid for an inexpensive hotel room near Times Square. She then began working at the jazz clubs Basin Street and Birdland. Shortly after turning twenty-one, during the summer of 1957, she officially changed her name to Carla Borg and started composing regularly. Carla Bley was further encouraged by musicians in Los Angeles. But perhaps most important, her encounter with Charlie Haden marked the start of a lifelong friendship, one that has resulted in some of the most innovative recordings ever made by large jazz ensembles, namely, the Liberation Music Orchestra projects beginning in 1969.

Schooling the future: Perceptions of Selected Experts on Jazz Education

Aspects of both the functionalist and interactionist schools in sociology consider formal education as a form of social reproduction. Despite the large number of students that participate in school jazz programs at the secondary level, very little research examines jazz education practices at this level. This paper is a re-interpretation of data collected for the author’s Master’s thesis that examines jazz education practices at the secondary level. Interviews of selected experts revealed that improvisation is considered fundamental to jazz curricula, and yet it is largely neglected in the performing practices of school jazz ensembles. The kinds of jazz education practices that exist in schools would seem to raise several important questions. With what kind of community of practice are students engaging? What kinds of meanings are students able to construct and negotiate, given the practice of performing commercial, Big Band arrangements? What message is communicated when improvisation is largely or completely neglected in school instruction, in favour of ‘polishing’ the sound of the orchestrated passages? School jazz education practices are examined through the theoretical lens of Lave and Wenger’s ‘situated learning,’ with implications presented for culture and society.

Gender and Participation in High School and College Instrumental Jazz Ensembles

This study is an examination of the relationship between gender and participation in high school and college instrumental jazz ensembles. Student demographic and attitudinal information was collected using the researcher-designed Instrumental Jazz Participation Survey (IJPS). Undergraduate college band students ( N=628) representing 15 programs offering degrees in music education were surveyed. Gender and jazz ensemble participation were found to be related at both levels; 52% of women and 80% of men surveyed reported playing jazz in high school, and 14% of women and 50% of men played in college. The results indicated that attitudes toward participation are influenced by both gender and jazz experience. Women and men were found to differ in their stated reasons for quitting jazz. Women's decisions to discontinue were affected by primary instrument selection, institutional obstacles that narrow participation options, feeling more comfortable in traditional ensembles, and an inability to connect jazz participation to career aspirations. April 21, 2004 October 1, 2004.