Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Australian jazz'

This study introduces the life and examines the music of Australian jazz trumpeter Keith Stirling (1938-2003). The paper discusses the importance and position of Stirling in the jazz culture of Australian music, introducing key concepts that were influential not only to the development of Australian jazz but also in his life. Subsequently, a discussion of Stirling’s metaphoric tendencies provides an understanding of his philosophical perspectives toward improvisation as an art form. Thereafter, a discourse of the research methodology that was used and the resources that were collected throughout the study introduce a control group of transcriptions. These transcriptions provide an origin of phrases with which to discuss aspects of Stirling’s improvisational style. Instrumental approaches and harmonic concepts are then discussed and exemplified through the analysis of the transcribed phrases. Stirling’s instrumental techniques and harmonic concepts are examined by means of his own and student’s hand written notes and quotes from lesson recordings that took place in the early 1980s.

This folio contains scores and audio recordings of five original compositions with critical commentary and ethnographic investigation. The research aims to test existing concepts of an Australian jazz identity and create new constructs for how music is created by a practicing jazz composer and performer. The research presents the results elicited from 11 interviews with selected Sydney jazz scene participants, providing an oral account of the way they create, conceive and perceive jazz music in Sydney and to compare evidence. In the five compositions I research various ways of integrating improvisation, non-Western and Australian influences into jazz and classical music contexts. I provide a case study of eclecticism and the role of improvisation in shaping programmatic goals with specific reference of my major work Iron in the Blood: Music Inspired by Robert Hughes’ The Fatal Shore for jazz orchestra and two narrators. The other works include River Meeting Suite for saxophone quartet, sitar, vocals, tabla and iphone, Oneirology for saxophone quartet and piano, Between Worlds for string quartet and saxophone and Border Control for flute, piccolo, bass clarinet, trumpet and vibraphone. This research addresses some of the deficiencies in the literature on Sydney jazz and creative music and illuminates the creative practices lying behind the creation of localised jazz identities through a case study of my composition portfolio and creative process. By expanding discussion beyond my own compositions, this project helps flesh out how “Australian” approaches to jazz composition, are realised across the Sydney scene and how these are distinct from other locales of jazz music production around the world. My perspective as a significant stakeholder within the jazz community, given that I am a performer, composer, performing artist, band manager and label director provides the research with a unique credibility and valuable insight into the field.

Singers communicate with audiences using a sophisticated blend of vocal, musical and physical gestures. While gestures appear naturalistic and spontaneous, they are the culmination of extensive preparation, reflection and rehearsal. The late Kerrie Biddell, (1947-2014) was arguably the most influential jazz singer in Australian Jazz history (Carriage 2000) and an expert in communication with her audiences. The aim of the study was to explore how Biddell designed and transmitted vocal, musical and physical gestures in performance and how she transmitted these to her colleagues and students. Five of Biddell’s former singing students and professional musical colleagues were invited to participate in an interview to explore the way in which Biddell utilised gestures and techniques to maximise her performance presentation. Each participant recounted their personal knowledge and history of working with Biddell, and analysed a video of Biddell performing live on Australian television to document how she effortlessly translated gestures into captivating performance. Participants reflected on their experience working with Biddell, and described how she was renowned for her stage presence, physical gestures, and facial animation. All described the way in which Biddell would create a scenario to depict the text of the song, and prepare a character to ensure her gestures were authentic and genuine to her audiences. Findings will be considered in the context of recent studies in performance and non-verbal communication. Future work on gesture must consider the work of leading performer/teachers and discover how they conceptualise and communicate gesture to audiences.

This PhD research explores ways of adapting to the reportedly common creative, financial, and psychological challenges facing jazz musicians developing and operating in the late 2010s, an era in which the context surrounding jazz music is rapidly evolving. Motivated by the problem of resolving my own creative inertia and personal wellbeing dysfunctions, born of grappling with these issues as an Australian freelance bassist, this study investigates the theory that often-unquestioned assumptions underpinning practice are sedimented socially and that those based on historic, hegemonic, or habitual practices may no longer be universally appropriate. In doing so, it contributes to a growing and necessary dialogue about the ‘why’ and ‘how’ of practice. With the aim of restructuring a more personally productive, sustainable, and meaningful approach to musicking, the primary research question asks: How can revising the musical and extra-musical assumptions of my jazz practice improve its processes and facilitate the generation of new creative work? The idiosyncratic and multifaceted methodology developed to investigate this question is itself an essential component of the research and a useful addition to research in the field. To uncover and revise tacit assumptions, the employed practice-led research methodology combines a suite of methods familiar to jazz practice and borrowed from qualitative research traditions with iterative creative cycles and several additional complementary theoretical concepts. The linchpin of this research strategy is a series of ten semi-structured interviews with bassists of a similar demographic (Sam Anning, Alex Boneham, Tom Botting, Anna Butterss, Karl Dunnicliff, David Groves, Noel Mason, Linda May Han Oh, Adam Spiegl, and Georgia Weber), which illuminate characteristics of contemporary practice and have provoked widespread changes to my own approach. The theorising and testing of revised strategies led to new personal clarity about the purpose and imperatives of practice, enriched my musical understanding, provided insight into factors influencing self-doubt, established a revised compositional framework, and ultimately facilitated the creation of the studio album Phantoms (Nick Abbey, 2019). Treating these developments as a case study, the research extends the particulars of my practice to present transferrable implications for other practitioners and identifies avenues for future research; for instance, it questions assumptions around ‘freelance jazz musicianship’ in the ‘precarious gig economy’ and highlights the importance of ‘self-efficacy’ as a theoretical construct for jazz musicians. The research’s overarching recommendations are that practice assumptions be routinely elucidated and assessed; practitioners and practitioner-researchers strive towards a more uplifting and pluralistic climate of practice; and contemporary, holistic, and socially minded research continues to increase in prevalence.

Drum set education is a specialised field, but its importance is often underestimated in Western Australian (WA) secondary school jazz ensembles. Many secondary school jazz ensemble directors specialise in instruments other than drum set, and consequently may lack knowledge and skills in this area to the detriment of both the drum set student and the ensemble. This research project investigated the interaction between selected secondary school jazz ensemble directors in WA, and their drum set students during rehearsals. In particular, it set out to examine the impact of the jazz ensemble director on student engagement, inclusion, leadership, collaborative learning and technical development. As part of an action research methodology, the study implemented a professional development intervention with the jazz ensemble directors and sought to assess the impact of the intervention in subsequent rehearsals. It noted an increase in positive interactions between ensemble directors and their drum set students. The study affirmed the value in instrument specific professional development for jazz ensemble directors to the benefit of both the jazz ensemble and in particular the drum set student.

Jazz is one of the most commonly taught musical styles in various educational contexts worldwide. Nevertheless, jazz teaching and learning resource materials are predominantly designed for those who have advanced beyond a basic level of competence. Further, the common understanding of jazz as a uniquely American style, in conjunction with Australia’s geographical and cultural distance from the USA, tend to feed the perception of foreignness of jazz when it comes to discussions of its place in Australia. For these reasons, classroom jazz education poses a unique set of challenges for Australian music teachers. This qualitative multiple case study examined five NSW secondary school music teachers’ perceptions of jazz, the extent and nature of its inclusion in their classroom curricula, and their classroom jazz teaching approaches. Data were collected from a series of semi-structured interviews, which revealed that although limited by its narrow appeal, teachers considered jazz to be highly effective in facilitating creativity, collaboration, and individuality of expression in students when carefully scaffolded and differentiated. The findings of the study indicate that while jazz may not be highly visible in NSW secondary schools, it is certainly viable and well-positioned to make a unique and worthwhile contribution to school music offerings.

“Jazz-Shaped Bodies” addresses representations of the city in black transnational literature, with a focus on sonic schemas and mapping. Drawing on cultural geography, posthumanist thought, and the discourse of diaspora, the thesis examines the extent to which the urban landscape is figured as a panoptic structure in twentieth and twenty-first century diasporic texts, and how the mimetic function of artistic performance challenges this structure. Through comparative analysis of works emerging from and/or invested with sites in American, Canadian, and Caribbean landscapes, the study develops accretively and is structured thematically, tracing how selected texts: map the socio-spatial dialectic through visual and sonic schemas; develop the metaphorical use of the phonograph in the folding of space and time; revive ancestral memory and renew an engagement with the landscape; negotiate and transcend shifting national, cultural, and geographical borderlines and boundaries that seek to encode and enclose black subjectivity. The project focuses on literary works such as James Baldwin’s intimate cartographies of New York in Another Country (1962), Earl Lovelace’s carnivalising of city space in The Dragon Can’t Dance (1979), Toni Morrison’s creative blending of the sounds of black music in Jazz (1992), and the postbody poetics of Wayde Compton’s Performance Bond (2004), among other texts that enact crossings of, or otherwise pierce, binaries and borderlines, innovating portals for alternative interpellation and subverting racially hegemonic visual regimes concretised in the architecture of the city. An examination of the specificity of the cityscape against the wider arc of transnationalism establishes how African American, AfroCaribbean, and Black Canadian texts share and exchange touchstones such as jazz, kinesis, liminality, and hauntedness, while remaining sensitive to the distinct sociohistorical contexts and intensities at each locus, underscoring the significance of rendition — of body, space, time, and sound — to black transnational writing.

This research has focused on the adaptation and interpretation of Cuban folkloric styles of rumba, danzon, punto libre and bolero. The dearth of commercial recording during the troubled years of Gerardo Machado's presidency (1925-1933) and the revolution of 1959 made it necessary to source archival recordings of rumba and punto libre as well as conduct interviews with living Cuban musicians and musicologists in order to research these folkloric genres. Whilst numerous recordings of danzón and bolero for large ensemble exist no texts were found regarding the orchestration of these styles across a standard jazz big band. This research investigates music and dance elements specific to each style and supports the orchestration of nine compositions for standard jazz big band using these elements. Experts in this field such as Rebeca Mauleón and Larry Crook have presented examples of rhythmic layering, call and response and improvisation inherent in these styles, but do not address the ways that instrumentation, tag lines, tempi, breaks and song forms in rumba, danzon, punto libre and bolero can be effectively adapted for large jazz ensemble. My finding is that big band composers including Lalo Schifrin ('LatinJazz Suite') have not employed the richness and complexity of the true folkloric elements of Cuban music styles in their arrangements. To fill this gap in current compositional knowledge my orchestrations and compositions respectfully draw from the elements that I have discovered through my research. A rigorous analysis of Cuban music styles in English accompanied by scores, recordings with examples of phrasing and the distribution of rhythmic and melodic material across the ensemble has been offered with this thesis.

Experiences as a composer and performer in Australia involve a number of significant collaborations with musicians from diverse cultures and musical backgrounds. The musical result incorporates a number of world music elements in the form of drones, rhythms and the use of instruments such as modified guitars and the tabla. But it is distinctly different in content and approach from the generic term, World music, because it deals almost exclusively with music traditions where improvisation is central to collaborative processes. The application of the term ‘intercultural improvisation’ is a more useful descriptor of the process in which musicians from diverse backgrounds cross the boundaries of their music and step into ao zone of experimentation. This is explored through composition and improvisation that cross musical boundaries
Master of Arts (Hons.)

Experiences as a composer and performer in Australia involve a number of significant collaborations with musicians from diverse cultures and musical backgrounds. The musical result incorporates a number of world music elements in the form of drones, rhythms and the use of instruments such as modified guitars and the tabla. But it is distinctly different in content and approach from the generic term, World music, because it deals almost exclusively with music traditions where improvisation is central to collaborative processes. The application of the term ‘intercultural improvisation’ is a more useful descriptor of the process in which musicians from diverse backgrounds cross the boundaries of their music and step into ao zone of experimentation. This is explored through composition and improvisation that cross musical boundaries

This qualitative study explores the approaches of expert jazz musicians actively involved in teaching, or jazz musician-educators, towards teaching jazz. The participants were six jazz musician-educators, whose experiences cover a wide range of musical styles and educational settings including classroom teaching, big bands, small ensembles, improvisation classes and workshops for Musica Viva in Schools. Semi-structured interviews were used to investigate how each participant taught jazz and jazz improvisation within their individual scenarios. A range of approaches was used for teaching improvisation, with participants focussing on simplicity and student confidence. A number of issues emerged as important to the jazz musician-educators, including the role of listening, style, and the emphases of big and small ensembles. They also felt that the study of jazz helped students' confidence in playing and making music. Recommendations are made for further study, particularly regarding how these expert approaches might be adapted for general music classrooms, where teachers are often not as confident in using jazz as they are with other music styles.

Ian Pearce (1921 - 2012) was an iconic figure within the Australian jazz scene, and pioneer of traditional jazz performance practice in Tasmania. His development and approach to the assimilation of traditional jazz practices provide a model for solving the problems arising from artistic isolation, and underpin the development of his unique creative voice. This research project takes Ian Pearce’s contribution as a case study, analysing his development and improvisational modalities, in order to uncover a method of interpretation and reinterpretation of traditional jazz within the context of Tasmanian jazz heritage, that in turn has enhanced my own performance practice. This project documents processes of experiential learning through performance based on a folio of original work including commercial releases The Last Sheiks (2013) and Post Matinée (2016), and two live concert recordings. The accompanying exegesis contextualizes this research conducted through performance, adopting an auto-ethnographic approach for critical reflection on the work in the folio. It also includes a body of transcriptions of Pearce’s work that provides a unique contribution to the understanding of the musical language of a key figure within Australian jazz; an area of academic study that has thus far been under-represented.

Herbie Hancock’s influential recordings from his pre-electric era, 1961-1968, display a jazz piano style that contains a unique combination of musical elements. This submission for the degree of Master of Philosophy in Music Performance investigates the ways in which Hancock’s improvisational language of this era can successfully be employed in performance by the modern jazz pianist. The project identifies melodic, harmonic and rhythmic traits from Hancock’s solos and presents prominent examples of each. It outlines how these are then assimilated through a practice regime that employs a series of twelve-key exercises. The musical elements are further developed to create more opportunities for their execution in a variety of musical situations. Two recitals are presented, one of Hancock’s pre-electric music specifically, and one encompassing a broader repertoire. Each recital demonstrates the application of these aspects of Hancock’s improvisational vocabulary in contemporary jazz performance. An explanation of this process of application is given, and specific examples from the recital recordings are used to illustrate that process. The submission consists of CD recordings of the two 60-minute public recitals and a 7500 word exegesis. This project highlights the process used by the modern jazz pianist to assimilate new improvisational techniques and apply these in performance.
Thesis (M.Phil.) -- University of Adelaide, Elder Conservatorium of Music, 2014

This project sought to examine the challenges faced by classroom music teachers in regional Australian secondary schools when they taught senior music students who wished to add jazz vocal repertoire to their examination performance program. As a jazz voice clinician who has presented workshops in schools for over a decade, I have had informal discussions with classroom music teachers about what areas of their teaching they find the most challenging. Many of the teachers who had not been trained in singing or in jazz indicated that they feel inadequately prepared to guide those students wishing to perform jazz vocal repertoire for their senior music examinations. This project was borne out of my curiosity to examine if this was a common issue amongst classroom music teachers in Australia and inspired me to investigate if they faced other challenges. Sixty regional secondary school classroom music teachers were surveyed in order to ascertain their level of teaching experience and musical background, how confident they were when teaching jazz as a genre, their familiarity with jazz vocal repertoire and what resources were already in use and being used effectively when working with senior jazz vocal students. Follow-up interviews with six regionally based secondary school classroom music teachers focused on their lived experiences teaching senior jazz vocal students in the classroom. Using a mixed methodology approach, the qualitative and quantitative data from the survey and interviews were analysed to identify common themes relating to the challenges the teachers faced when teaching jazz vocal students. Analysis of the data suggests that while the teachers’ personal music interests are the key to developing their skills when teaching out of their area of expertise, they are time-poor. This is not only due to being part of a small music department and having to take on a bigger teaching role both in and out of the classroom, but also having to teach subjects other than music, or teaching out-of-field. The interview data also revealed that the pre-service teacher education courses for classroom music teachers should have more time allocated for learning practical skills that are needed in the classroom. These skills include conducting a band or choir or developing skills in playing a genre or instrument in which they have not been trained, such as jazz voice. This is reflective of the specialised and multi-faceted nature of teaching classroom music in regional Australia. The teachers also indicated that they had experienced various types of isolation, including geographic, cultural, educational, and professional. One of the main findings was that teachers in regional areas struggle to access appropriate professional development due to the travel time and expense that travelling to a major city entails. The research has shown that as the teachers were not always able to attend professional development courses, especially on a topic as specific as learning jazz vocal repertoire, there is need for more targeted professional development courses and mentoring opportunities to be made available online or delivered to regional centres. The project investigated what pedagogical resources were currently used and the extent to which the teachers’ own musical backgrounds help or hinder their ability to teach jazz voice confidently. In order to create appropriate resources which will be used by classroom music teachers it was important to determine what specific pedagogical resources are needed when guiding jazz vocal students through their senior music programs, and to ascertain what type of resources teachers prefer and will use. The interview data showed that the teachers predominantly prefer short, ten-minute videos that guide them step-by-step through teaching methods that will enable them to help their students extend their educational outcomes. In summary, the findings of this research project have shown that teachers lack confidence when teaching jazz vocal students if they have not had experience in jazz or singing themselves. Their busy position as a regional classroom teacher leaves them with limited time for upskilling and travelling to professional development courses is often too time consuming and expensive. The knowledge that teachers would be interested in attending a professional development course on teaching jazz voice and would use resources that help them guide jazz vocal students provides an opportunity for developing further research into the creation of a multi-media package that offers guidance to the teacher in short modules that can also be counted towards their professional learning.

One giant leap for jazz: the life and work of Roger Frampton is a practice-led research project comprising a treatment for a documentary film and an exegesis. The treatment explores the life of the musician, Roger Frampton (1948 – 2000), and his impact on Australian jazz. The exegesis examines the creative decision-making underlying this biographical process, given that I am Frampton’s daughter. Whilst complete in its current iteration as a Master of Research thesis, the study also lays the foundations for a doctorate, where the film will be produced and the exegesis expanded. Within Australian jazz history, there are few biographies of key contributors to the field. While many of his creative endeavours were documented throughout his lifetime, a complete biographical account of Frampton does not yet exist. The treatment traces Frampton’s life from his early years in Portsmouth to his tragic death from a brain tumour at age 51. Through interviews with family, friends, collaborators and former students, as well as references to archival footage and recordings of his music, the treatment communicates Frampton’s significant role in Australian jazz. It acknowledges his heading of the jazz course at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, his numerous compositions, industry awards and completion of a doctorate. The exegesis contains three fields of scholarly focus: a sub-field of life writing known as patriography (‘writing the father’), grief, and documentary film theory. It explores my relationship with Frampton and its impact on the biographical process, as influenced by my experience of having lost him. In doing so, the inextricable connection of grief to the process of making a film about my father is made clearly apparent. I consider a range of patriographies, creative texts which derive from grief, and the increasing prevalence of autoethnography in documentary film. I develop the term ‘aural-visual patriography’ to encapsulate my work.

The mention of jazz in Australia might conjure up thoughts of performances in trendy laneway venues in Melbourne or other metropolitan cities. However, jazz is performed throughout the country in many smaller regional centres. These regions often have highly skilled musicians who enjoy the support of a small, but passionate, community. This thesis documents a qualitative exploration of the question: What factors influence the development and sustainability of a jazz community in regional Australia? The study focussed on Cairns and Mackay in North Queensland, Australia, and applied grounded theory methodology to data from 24 semi-structured interviews with community members in both regions. The data collection also included a survey of audience members associated with the jazz community in Mackay. The study investigated topics associated with performance, sociological, governmental and educational factors in both communities, and through the grounded theory process it uncovered three major influences: venues, regionality and education. It was discovered that both communities shared similar challenges in relation to jazz musicians performing in venues, working with venue owners, and attracting audiences. Both regions also shared issues relating to geographical isolation, economic impacts, transient populations, and parochialism from the general public. While there were some similarities in the factors that contributed to the development of the jazz communities in Cairns and Mackay, the study also uncovered significant differences based on the distinct geographical, economic, sociological and educational influences within each region. i This study provided an opportunity to explore multiple approaches to building and sustaining two North Queensland jazz communities. Since some of these approaches might be applicable to jazz communities in other regional areas, a series of practical recommendations have been drawn from this investigation.

This doctoral study comprises a documentary film and a dissertation. The documentary film, Roger Frampton comes alive!, provides a biographical portrait of my father, the jazz musician Roger Frampton, while the dissertation explores the fields of grief, patriography (or ‘writing the father’), and documentary film. These explorations are contextualised by the film, and the tensions that derived from my role as its director as well as the daughter of the biographical subject. Roger Frampton (1948–2000) played a significant role in the development of Australian jazz and improvised music. Through his playing, composing, collaborating, and long-term teaching at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, he helped nurture a generation of jazz artists, and to cultivate a style that remains today. The film illuminates his life and work through interviews with his family, contemporaries, and former students, as well as through his music and archival footage of his performances. The film also functions as a creative expression of loss. Resonating with theoretical notions of documentary film as ‘domestic ethnography’ and a ‘cinema of mourning’ (Renov 2004), it demonstrates the capacity for filmmaking to mitigate the experience of grief through the creation of a connection between the bereaved filmmaker and the deceased biographical subject. This new and ongoing bond between biographer and subject, between daughter and father, brings about an understanding of the father that allows love and forgiveness to prosper. Through the research of the filmmaker’s family history that underlies the patriographical project, it also brings about a greater understanding of the self.