Jazz Improvisation | Museocology

The North East England is relatively ample in its regional resources for live jazz venues, to name a few, from the Globe cooperative in the west end of Newcastle, to a new addition to Ouseburn, the Billy Bootleggers in the Arch 2, where there are more than weekly live jazz gigs and rehearsals.

Ever wonder how jazz musicians put together their live performance, or aspire to form a jazz quartet with other instrumentalists and vocalists? Perhaps the following notes can shed some light on the creative process.

It may sound odd to point out that jazz improvisation is "not created by divine intervention". It is instead a secular conversation with our lived realities, or with the "deep sense of history" around the world, drawing on the "powerful vocabulary" provided by musical techniques and "a quick mind". Building on these techniques is a rather skill-based practice involving the tools and languages similar to other musical genres.

Key elements involved in the creative process of jazz improvisation:

form and harmony
melody, i.e. the leading tunes
"the establishment of strong voice-leading"
and most importantly, rhythm and time .

These notes and the playlist have been compiled based on the chapter authored by David Demsey on "Jazz Improvisation and Concepts of Virtuosity" (p.788-793) in The Oxford Companion to Jazz (2000) edited by Bill Kirchner.

"... the art and magic of improvisation are unique for each individual performer. When the two aspects of improvisation - the art and the craft - come together, the actual art of creation occurs."

-- D. Demsey