Previous jazz experience is needed to take this module.
This module will develop key skills in rearranging standards from the jazz canon. You will look at a number of specific techniques on how to re-create jazz standards in a stylistically inventive manner. The module also allows you to build on your skills to develop a more personalised sound and style within jazz.
You will debate whether Jazz is a style or a process, and be introduced to a variety of models, both practical and theoretical, to recent developments in jazz up to the present day. By exploring the work of such artists as Anthony Braxton and Weather Report, and critical frameworks such as Foucault and Lyotard, Jazz, in this context, will be redefined as a ‘process’, albeit still rooted in a tradition.
You will examine jazz as a form of social transformation, jazz from a postmodern perspective, jazz and issues of gender and jazz as a global phenomenon alongside other related subjects. You will be encouraged to examine and work with the ‘jazz process’, which can be traced back to the very first inception of jazz in New Orleans.
