Early jazz education
Jazz has long been celebrated for its roots as an aural tradition. This defined early jazz education in New Orleans, where the music originated among musicians who largely could not read music. [4] Early musically literate musicians who were able to afford formal music lessons, such as Jelly Roll Morton, scorned formal education and were left with varying degrees of musical literacy. [5] In New Orleans at the turn of the 20th century, as jazz was taking form from its roots, musicians learned in a style that is best described as an apprenticeship. Younger musicians would study with an older and more experienced musician, learning by listening to the music their mentor played. [6] This relationship also extended to a personal level. Many of these younger musicians would run errands for their mentors in order to repay them for the musical lessons. An early example of this style of education is Louis Armstrong, who studied under famed trumpet player King Oliver. [7] This educational form was dependent on aural skills. This style of pedagogy was prevalent in an era where the music relied heavily on group improvisation. [8] The use, almost exclusively, of ear training amongst pedagogues and the cultural influence of New Orleans made this style of jazz the most practical and popular.
In the late 1910s and early 1920s, jazz begins to move north to Chicago [7] and New York City. [9] These two urban areas were particularly popular because they provided a larger audience base for performers and closer proximity to recording studios. [10] During the early part of the 1920s, New Orleans Jazz was prevalent in the many nightclubs sprung up in Chicago. [11] In New York a new style of jazz became immensely popular. This style, known as Big Band, ushered in a new era of jazz education. [12]
Big band music is particularly important for jazz education because it introduces a number of new forums for the furthering of jazz music. The first such forum is the arranger. With the emergence of big bands arose a need for more detailed and thorough arrangements. Arrangers helped to standardize big band vocabulary. With the arranger, jazz began to mature from its roots as an exclusively aural art form. The arranger helped to introduce new influences, especially Impressionist Music during the big band era. [13]
The next influential introduction of the big band era was the emergence of after hours jam sessions. [13] Many ideas for arrangements developed from after hours jam sessions. Many of these ideas would eventually turn into arrangements of their own. Duke Ellington used this technique to create new tunes and arrangements. [14]
These jam sessions were also a pivotal forum for the development of jazz improvisation. Jam sessions were home to the exploration of and self-education in improvisation. Musicians used these sessions as a way to learn from fellow musicians to improve their own skills. Clubs like Monroe’s Uptown House and Minton’s Playhouse became the public home for the phenomena that already took place in apartments and smaller venues across Manhattan and the rest of the country. The style that most directly descended from these jam sessions is known as bebop. Early bebop musicians such as Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie and Thelonious Monk introduced a new and more virtuosic style of improvising that proved influential to future generations of jazz musicians [15]
Early university jazz programs
Jazz bands in secondary schools and colleges typically emerged as extracurricular auxiliary ensembles, derived from larger concert or marching bands. The earliest college jazz bands were not offered for academic credit and were usually organized and led by students. (Oxford Music Online) [1]
Prior to the first jazz degree, some academic classes were offered. In 1941 the New School for Social Research in Manhattan offered a jazz history course. In 1945 a school known as the Schillenger House opened in Boston. This school "offered a two year curriculum and awarded an artist diploma." [1] In 1973, the Schillenger House, which became the Berklee School of Music in 1954, officially changed its name to Berklee College of Music. The first college degree in jazz was offered in 1947 at the University of North Texas. [1] [16] Over the course of the next few decades, jazz programs popped up all over the country and around the world. [1] This Timeline of jazz education, notes the starting dates of many of these influential programs.
By 1950, there were over 30 colleges and universities offering jazz courses. [17] Along with this growth at universities came a number of summer programs that served to educate young musicians about jazz. Stan Kenton is particularly famous for starting one such summer program. These summer camps were some of the first academic institution of any type to invite professional musicians to help educate young students. [18] This precedent continued to become more prominent. [19]
Creating a jazz curriculum
One of the most difficult, controversial and necessary steps in molding jazz into an academic program was standardization and formalization of jazz music. Prior to the introduction of the first jazz academic programs, musicians attempted to produce literature that explained jazz in a formal manner. [1] Norbert Beihoff (né Norbert John Beihoff; 1904–2003) first attempted to explain jazz improvisation and arranging in a 1935 publication entitled Modern Arranging and Orchestration ( OCLC 191822905). Professional musicians wrote method books, some with accompanying play-along records. Down Beat magazine published transcribed solos and pedagogical articles. In 1941 Joseph Schillinger published The Schillinger System of Musical Composition, a widely used text based on his own system of jazz arranging. George Russell wrote a text entitled Lydian Chromatic Concept of Tonal Organization in 1953, promoting the idea that jazz chords have corresponding scales that may be used for improvisation". [1] These books did not have a universal impact and were quickly forgotten. As the discipline expanded it became increasingly necessary to create standardized material to support a jazz curriculum. Early jazz educators such as Jamey Aebersold, David Baker and Jerry Coker laid the groundwork for a more universal educational practice. The first round of textbooks and other resources was characterized by an emphasis on strict formalization and structure, on the definition of levels, and on establishing a relatively narrow core early Aebersold books. In this clarification process, harmonic structures also became codified, and progressions such as the twelve-bar blues and the ii-V-I were defined as the easiest and most common, as indeed they were at the time." [20]
Aebersold's Play-A-Long book and record combinations had particular influence, with sales of over 5 million copies since they first were introduced in 1967. [21] Working with many music educators through workshops, including the Summer Jazz Workshop, Aebersold expanded his materials into a system, recommending a particular approach to chord-scale improvisation and the use of his Scale Syllabus. Today, many musicians continue to use Play-A-Long materials, from Aebersold or software-based providers, to learn theory while playing over backing tracks.
"The need to justify jazz education as worthy of institutional and cultural attention led to a clear, if in retrospect slightly limited, definition of a single jazz style and related set of skills." [20] The style that came to the fore for early jazz educators was bebop. Bebop improvisation is based on these fairly standard patterns and usually performed at tempos that force musicians to acquire a high level of facility with their instrument. Bebop vocabulary quickly became an important part of early formalized jazz education. [22]
Overlooked by this approach were the equally developed written techniques of jazz music. By this point in time, jazz composition and arranging had in its own right reached virtuosic levels. Written jazz, thanks in large part to the popularity of the swing era, established its own traditions within jazz music. One of the first educators to incorporate this aspect of jazz into was Gene Hall, a graduate of University of North Texas. [1] Gene Hall, who had written a master's thesis there in which he outlined a proposed college-level jazz curriculum, became the first faculty member in the new program. Central to Hall's curriculum was an arranging class for which a laboratory ensemble performed student arrangements and compositions. That ensemble became the One O'Clock Lab Band." [1]
Educational ensembles
The end of World War II signified the end of the big band era. Even prior to this band leaders experienced difficulty financial supporting larger ensembles. As early as 1930, bands were trimming down to smaller ensembles. After the war, only a handful of the most prolific big bands survived. Many of these bands continued to tour for a number of years, but big bands have never enjoyed the professional success they enjoyed during the Swing Era. [23] College jazz programs revitalized the dying style.
By 1970 there were more than 450 college jazz bands and by 1980 there were over 500,000 high school and college students involved in jazz activities. [2] The influx of student musicians brought about by formalized jazz education suddenly provided academic institutions with the numbers necessary to create their own big bands. Big bands also serve a very important pedagogical purpose. These bands enable educators to access a greater number of students at the same time.
In 1967, as the number of college jazz bands was increasing at a rapid rate, a new ensemble was formed at Mount Hood Community College. This ensemble took big band repertoire and set it for choir. Genesis became the first jazz choir. The creation of the vocal jazz ensemble is indicative of the direction of jazz education. [24] Educators searching for new ways to make the music accessible turned to fusing different styles. The vocal jazz ensemble combines the classical traditions of Western Art Music, the vocal and instrumental traditions of jazz, and the pedagogical influence of jazz education.
Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, Louisiana, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with its roots in blues and ragtime. Since the 1920s Jazz Age, it has been recognized as a major form of musical expression in traditional and popular music. Jazz is characterized by swing and blue notes, complex chords, call and response vocals, polyrhythms and improvisation. Jazz has roots in European harmony and African rhythmic rituals.
Bebop or bop is a style of jazz developed in the early-to-mid-1940s in the United States. The style features compositions characterized by a fast tempo, complex chord progressions with rapid chord changes and numerous changes of key, instrumental virtuosity, and improvisation based on a combination of harmonic structure, the use of scales and occasional references to the melody.
A jazz band is a musical ensemble that plays jazz music. Jazz bands vary in the quantity of its members and the style of jazz that they play but it is common to find a jazz band made up of a rhythm section and a horn section.
A big band or jazz orchestra is a type of musical ensemble of jazz music that usually consists of ten or more musicians with four sections: saxophones, trumpets, trombones, and a rhythm section. Big bands originated during the early 1910s and dominated jazz in the early 1940s when swing was most popular. The term "big band" is also used to describe a genre of music, although this was not the only style of music played by big bands.
Swing music is a style of jazz that developed in the United States during the late 1920s and early '30s. It became nationally popular from the mid-1930s. The name derived from its emphasis on the off-beat, or nominally weaker beat. Swing bands usually featured soloists who would improvise on the melody over the arrangement. The danceable swing style of big bands and bandleaders such as Benny Goodman was the dominant form of American popular music from 1935 to 1946, known as the swing era, when people were dancing the Lindy Hop. The verb "to swing" is also used as a term of praise for playing that has a strong groove or drive. Musicians of the swing era include Duke Ellington, Benny Goodman, Count Basie, Cab Calloway, Jimmy Dorsey, Tommy Dorsey, Woody Herman, Harry James, Lionel Hampton, Glenn Miller, Artie Shaw, Jimmie Lunceford, and Django Reinhardt.
Cool jazz is a style of modern jazz music inspired by bebop and big band that arose in the United States after World War II. It is characterized by relaxed tempos and a lighter tone than that used in the fast and complex bebop style. Cool jazz often employs formal arrangements and incorporates elements of classical music. Broadly, the genre refers to a number of post-war jazz styles employing a more subdued approach than that of contemporaneous jazz idioms. As Paul Tanner, Maurice Gerow, and David Megill suggest, "the tonal sonorities of these conservative players could be compared to pastel colors, while the solos of [Dizzy] Gillespie and his followers could be compared to fiery red colors."
John Aaron Lewis was an American jazz pianist, composer and arranger, best known as the founder and musical director of the Modern Jazz Quartet.
Leonard Joseph Tristano was an American jazz pianist, composer, arranger, and teacher of jazz improvisation.
Birth of the Cool is a compilation album by American jazz trumpeter and bandleader Miles Davis, released in February 1957 by Capitol Records. It compiles eleven tracks recorded by Davis's nonet for the label over the course of three sessions during 1949 and 1950.
Afro-Cuban jazz is the earliest form of Latin jazz. It mixes Afro-Cuban clave-based rhythms with jazz harmonies and techniques of improvisation. Afro-Cuban music has deep roots in African ritual and rhythm. The genre emerged in the early 1940s with the Cuban musicians Mario Bauzá and Frank Grillo "Machito" in the band Machito and his Afro-Cubans in New York City. In 1947, the collaborations of bebop trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie and percussionist Chano Pozo brought Afro-Cuban rhythms and instruments, such as the tumbadora and the bongo, into the East Coast jazz scene. Early combinations of jazz with Cuban music, such as "Manteca" and "Mangó Mangüé", were commonly referred to as "Cubop" for Cuban bebop.
A jam session is a relatively informal musical event, process, or activity where musicians, typically instrumentalists, play improvised solos and vamp over tunes, drones, songs, and chord progressions. To "jam" is to improvise music without extensive preparation or predefined arrangements, except for when the group is playing well-known jazz standards or covers of existing popular songs. Original jam sessions, also called "free flow sessions," are often used by musicians to develop new material (music) and find suitable arrangements. Both styles can be used simply as a social gathering and communal practice session. Jam sessions may be based upon existing songs or forms, may be loosely based on an agreed chord progression or chart suggested by one participant, or may be wholly improvisational. Jam sessions can range from very loose gatherings of amateurs to evenings where a jam session coordinator or host acts as a "gatekeeper" so that appropriate-level performers take the stage to sophisticated improvised recording sessions by professionals which are intended to be broadcast live on radio or TV or edited and released to the public.
West Coast jazz refers to styles of jazz that developed in Los Angeles and San Francisco during the 1950s. West Coast jazz is often seen as a subgenre of cool jazz, which consisted of a calmer style than bebop or hard bop. The music relied relatively more on composition and arrangement than on the individually improvised playing of other jazz styles. Although this style dominated, it was not the only form of jazz heard on the American West Coast.
Barry Doyle Harris was an American jazz pianist, bandleader, composer, arranger, and educator. He was an exponent of the bebop style.
Wilton Jameson "Jamey" Aebersold is an American publisher, educator, and jazz saxophonist. His Play-A-Long series of instructional books and CDs, using the chord-scale system, the first of which was released in 1967, are an internationally renowned resource for jazz education. His summer workshops have educated students of all ages since the 1960s.
Kansas City jazz is a style of jazz that developed in Kansas City, Missouri during the 1920s and 1930s, which marked the transition from the structured big band style to the much more improvisational style of bebop. The hard-swinging, bluesy transition style is bracketed by Count Basie, who in 1929 signed with Bennie Moten's Kansas City Orchestra, and Kansas City native Charlie Parker, who ushered in the bebop style in America.
Jack Leroy Petersen is an American jazz guitarist and educator. He was a pedagogical architect for jazz guitar and jazz improvisation at Berklee College of Music, University of North Texas College of Music, and University of North Florida.
The chord-scale system is a method of matching, from a list of possible chords, a list of possible scales. The system has been widely used since the 1970s.
Dixieland jazz, also referred to as traditional jazz, hot jazz, or simply Dixieland, is a style of jazz based on the music that developed in New Orleans at the start of the 20th century. The 1917 recordings by the Original Dixieland Jass Band, fostered awareness of this new style of music.
Joseph Riposo is a saxophonist, composer, arranger, and was an educator at Syracuse University. He was the Director of Jazz Studies at Syracuse University and directed the Morton B. Schiff Jazz Ensemble. He has played with Tony Bennett, Sammy Davis Jr., Nat King Cole, Ella Fitzgerald, the Mcguire Sisters, the Woody Herman Band, Jackie Leonard, Diane Schuur, Harry Connick Jr., and Natalie Cole. Riposo has been a conductor for jazz ensembles with Dizzy Gillespie, Phil Woods, Marvin Stamm, Darius Brubeck, and Nick Brignola.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to jazz: