Courses

This course explores diverse approaches to analyzing jazz and improvisation.  Students will engage with analytical methods stemming from both scholars and improvisers, learn to apply traditional analytical approaches, examine critical issues underlying them, and develop new applications of heretofore underexamined ones.  We will focus alternatively on harmony, solos, interaction, cognition, rhythm, and pedagogy, among other issues, and the survey will afford students insight into the priorities, methodologies, outcomes, and shortcomings of each of them.  Additionally, the course covers theoretical texts produced by improvising musicians, as well as instances where improvisers engage with preexisting theoretical texts.  Finally, we will also examine intersections between identity—encompassing issues such as race, ethnicity, gender, and class among others—and music theory.  We will investigate characterizations of music theory, composition, and improvisation in terms of identity and suggest ways that we might incorporate the diverse range of theorists and analysts in our course into larger intellectual and musical histories.