Introduction, Research Question
During high school, a passion for playing music and saxophone was evident, yet I resisted the idea of building knowledge. I could improvise but I did not know what I was doing. Playing along with Ornette Coleman’s The Shape of Jazz to Come (Coleman, 1959) certainly helped me to see possibilities of one’s imagination, using the ear and one’s memory to explore. Yet, the ear informs and provides information to the musical activity; it is where music composition and performance begins and ends. For example, Hindemith explains that:
While listening to the musical structure, as it unfolds before his ears, he (the listener) is mentally constructing parallel to it and simultaneously with it a mirrored image. Registering the composition's components as they reach him he tries to match them with their corresponding parts of his mental construction. Or he merely surmises the composition's presumable course and compares it with the image of a musical structure, which after a former experience he had stored away in his memory. In both cases the more closely the external musical impression approaches a perfect coincidence with his mental expectation of the composition, the greater will be his aesthetic satisfaction. (Hindemith, 1952, p. 20)
A lack of theory alongside aural memory made me feel alone in a dark room looking for a light switch, which in turn generated an ingenuity to problem-solve, evolving to become a character trait in my later years of schooling. I was seeking methods for comprehending musical language, its fundamentals, and their relationships. I compare this aspiration to a comment by the 20th century composer/teacher, Nadia Boulanger, who described her aesthetic expectations as well constructed musical statements, noting that: "I only hope that a certain approach to grammar and to the form of language goes beyond personal taste” (Boulanger, 2015, YouTube).
My motivations to evolve as a musician, composer, leader, educator, and now a researcher, came about due to lack of resources, guidance, tools, and a method for self-learning, leading to my earliest studies at Sydney Conservatorium of Music, some 25 years ago. Since then, my output has been birthed in a need to learn, explore, understand and express musical structures, both as compositions and as improvisations. Composition arose both as a creative need and tool for learning to improvise. It was ‘necessity – the mother of invention’ which led to a desire to learn music theory as an improviser through my own compositional works; allowing discovery to take place: how melody, harmony, and rhythm combine and interrelate as an organized structure. As a composer/player and leader, learning to write music with the character for diverse scenarios that could be developed and interpreted by the inspired improvising musician for exploration, along with pursuing effective techniques for small jazz ensemble compositional performance necessitated investigating two key areas as a method: intuition and intellect.
Intuition and intellect as a praxis is a distinguishing feature shared with both arts and science; and the advancement, examination, trial, disposal and fulfillment of ideas as a process (Zielinski, 2011, p. 299) is reflected in this study through the composition’s performance within, during and by way of artistic practice as a composer, performer, and leader in a small jazz ensemble. Perspectives are explored using metaphor as a descriptor and the focus is not so much on the product but on its expedition and recording. My objective: to delve into underlying processes occurring on the subconscious and conscious levels of music-making, both as an individual and also as a collective, using ‘intuition’ and ‘intellect’ as a thread to understanding. Consequently, for this research project, compositions were written as devices to interrogate my primary question: How do the processes involved in the composition, development, absorption, interpretation, and transferral of material from the score to the performance contribute to the development of artistic practice as a composer/player/leader of a small jazz ensemble?
To play jazz is to improvise, organizing sounds into a structure, as part of or in direct correlation with a compositional performance. The small jazz ensemble compositional performance is “its own goal”, “the process is the product, and the researcher is forced to focus on the creative processes of group creativity” (Sawyer, 2003, p. 5). Henk Borgdorff describes the management of this artistic process and its outcomes as:
Distinctive ontological, epistemological and methodological framework, its social and intellectual organisation, and its specific forms of engagement, talent development and quality control all serve to highlight what academic research could also potentially be – a thorough and sensitive investigation, exploration and mobilisation of the affective and cognitive propensities of the human mind in their coherence, and of the artistic products of that mind. This means that artistic research, through its quest for fundamental understanding, is equally dedicated to broadening our perspectives and enriching our minds as it is to enriching our world with new images, narratives, sounds and experiences (Borgdorff, 2009, pp. 15–16).
The artistic product, the small jazz ensemble composition, is a scenario which is much easier to negotiate due to its size and shape dictating what one can actually do in the gap between compositional intention and the improvising musician’s interpretation, exhibited as the aesthetical presentation of a work, as a space for participants to perform; necessary for jazzing (a suggested descriptor for this activity). To date, I have accumulated almost 160 works, with 60 compositions created since this research project began. Compositional ideas from personal reading and listening throughout the course of the study was developed at either the saxophone or piano. I often use the piano because of the possibilities which exist melodically and harmonically, compared to the saxophone which can only play one note at a time. They are different viewpoints for discovering concepts which may or may not be familiar to me as an improviser/composer. Therefore, this project involved writing, performing and recording ten compositions as an improvising jazz saxophonist in a small ensemble context – the source of my practice.
Communicating or withholding information and remaining open to participants’ suggestions, using one’s discernment, was a requirement in leading the ensemble. The process was fourfold: the writing, rehearsal, and arrangement of the composition; the composition’s performance; reflecting on the performance; leading to further insights for all involved, almost as if the composition had a life of its own, an entity in and of itself. This process is a direct outcome, influencing “jazz community’s…performance practices, rearranging and transforming…elements”, developing “original approaches to collective improvisation”, exposing the “limitations of applying conventional labels to style periods and idioms when describing the diversity of music making within the jazz tradition” (Berliner, 2009, p. 341).
In regards to this study, I asked myself: what is involved and how can one produce and present a subject which is interesting enough to talk about and explore amongst improvisers? Compositions were performed by either a quartet or quintet consisting of saxophone, piano, double bass, drums and or trumpet. A portfolio of audio/video recordings, consisting of studio and public performances and scores, accompanies the written exegesis, assisting in comprehending developments and interpretations of musical works. The exegesis includes my perspective as a composer, performer, and leader, as a participant/observer, and those of contributing members of my small ensemble via an open-ended questionnaire, with data recorded in a journal, gathered from the writing, rehearsal, and performance of compositions.
While listening to the musical structure, as it unfolds before his ears, he (the listener) is mentally constructing parallel to it and simultaneously with it a mirrored image. Registering the composition's components as they reach him he tries to match them with their corresponding parts of his mental construction. Or he merely surmises the composition's presumable course and compares it with the image of a musical structure, which after a former experience he had stored away in his memory. In both cases the more closely the external musical impression approaches a perfect coincidence with his mental expectation of the composition, the greater will be his aesthetic satisfaction. (Hindemith, 1952, p. 20)
A lack of theory alongside aural memory made me feel alone in a dark room looking for a light switch, which in turn generated an ingenuity to problem-solve, evolving to become a character trait in my later years of schooling. I was seeking methods for comprehending musical language, its fundamentals, and their relationships. I compare this aspiration to a comment by the 20th century composer/teacher, Nadia Boulanger, who described her aesthetic expectations as well constructed musical statements, noting that: "I only hope that a certain approach to grammar and to the form of language goes beyond personal taste” (Boulanger, 2015, YouTube).
My motivations to evolve as a musician, composer, leader, educator, and now a researcher, came about due to lack of resources, guidance, tools, and a method for self-learning, leading to my earliest studies at Sydney Conservatorium of Music, some 25 years ago. Since then, my output has been birthed in a need to learn, explore, understand and express musical structures, both as compositions and as improvisations. Composition arose both as a creative need and tool for learning to improvise. It was ‘necessity – the mother of invention’ which led to a desire to learn music theory as an improviser through my own compositional works; allowing discovery to take place: how melody, harmony, and rhythm combine and interrelate as an organized structure. As a composer/player and leader, learning to write music with the character for diverse scenarios that could be developed and interpreted by the inspired improvising musician for exploration, along with pursuing effective techniques for small jazz ensemble compositional performance necessitated investigating two key areas as a method: intuition and intellect.
Intuition and intellect as a praxis is a distinguishing feature shared with both arts and science; and the advancement, examination, trial, disposal and fulfillment of ideas as a process (Zielinski, 2011, p. 299) is reflected in this study through the composition’s performance within, during and by way of artistic practice as a composer, performer, and leader in a small jazz ensemble. Perspectives are explored using metaphor as a descriptor and the focus is not so much on the product but on its expedition and recording. My objective: to delve into underlying processes occurring on the subconscious and conscious levels of music-making, both as an individual and also as a collective, using ‘intuition’ and ‘intellect’ as a thread to understanding. Consequently, for this research project, compositions were written as devices to interrogate my primary question: How do the processes involved in the composition, development, absorption, interpretation, and transferral of material from the score to the performance contribute to the development of artistic practice as a composer/player/leader of a small jazz ensemble?
To play jazz is to improvise, organizing sounds into a structure, as part of or in direct correlation with a compositional performance. The small jazz ensemble compositional performance is “its own goal”, “the process is the product, and the researcher is forced to focus on the creative processes of group creativity” (Sawyer, 2003, p. 5). Henk Borgdorff describes the management of this artistic process and its outcomes as:
Distinctive ontological, epistemological and methodological framework, its social and intellectual organisation, and its specific forms of engagement, talent development and quality control all serve to highlight what academic research could also potentially be – a thorough and sensitive investigation, exploration and mobilisation of the affective and cognitive propensities of the human mind in their coherence, and of the artistic products of that mind. This means that artistic research, through its quest for fundamental understanding, is equally dedicated to broadening our perspectives and enriching our minds as it is to enriching our world with new images, narratives, sounds and experiences (Borgdorff, 2009, pp. 15–16).
The artistic product, the small jazz ensemble composition, is a scenario which is much easier to negotiate due to its size and shape dictating what one can actually do in the gap between compositional intention and the improvising musician’s interpretation, exhibited as the aesthetical presentation of a work, as a space for participants to perform; necessary for jazzing (a suggested descriptor for this activity). To date, I have accumulated almost 160 works, with 60 compositions created since this research project began. Compositional ideas from personal reading and listening throughout the course of the study was developed at either the saxophone or piano. I often use the piano because of the possibilities which exist melodically and harmonically, compared to the saxophone which can only play one note at a time. They are different viewpoints for discovering concepts which may or may not be familiar to me as an improviser/composer. Therefore, this project involved writing, performing and recording ten compositions as an improvising jazz saxophonist in a small ensemble context – the source of my practice.
Communicating or withholding information and remaining open to participants’ suggestions, using one’s discernment, was a requirement in leading the ensemble. The process was fourfold: the writing, rehearsal, and arrangement of the composition; the composition’s performance; reflecting on the performance; leading to further insights for all involved, almost as if the composition had a life of its own, an entity in and of itself. This process is a direct outcome, influencing “jazz community’s…performance practices, rearranging and transforming…elements”, developing “original approaches to collective improvisation”, exposing the “limitations of applying conventional labels to style periods and idioms when describing the diversity of music making within the jazz tradition” (Berliner, 2009, p. 341).
In regards to this study, I asked myself: what is involved and how can one produce and present a subject which is interesting enough to talk about and explore amongst improvisers? Compositions were performed by either a quartet or quintet consisting of saxophone, piano, double bass, drums and or trumpet. A portfolio of audio/video recordings, consisting of studio and public performances and scores, accompanies the written exegesis, assisting in comprehending developments and interpretations of musical works. The exegesis includes my perspective as a composer, performer, and leader, as a participant/observer, and those of contributing members of my small ensemble via an open-ended questionnaire, with data recorded in a journal, gathered from the writing, rehearsal, and performance of compositions.
