This research explores the practical and performance challenges and advantages of jazz singing and improvising in two contrasting contexts: vocalists accompanied by a separate piano player and rhythm section ...

McCoy Tyner is undoubtedly the most influential jazz pianist in the modern era, defining the modern piano aesthetic for generations to come. This document aims to define the key elements of McCoy Tyner’s creative artistry ...

At the time of its conception in the United States, jazz synthesized a variety of accessible, spontaneous, theatrical, and interactive instrumental and vocal music-making activities that featured solo and collective ...

Guitarist and composer Mary Halvorson has recently made a name for herself as a bastion of musical innovation within the scope of free improvised music through her highly eclectic and progressive musical output. This output ...

Stringed instruments naturally possess a vocal quality where, similar to the human voice, notes can be modified through bends and slides, lending themselves to numerous styles of music. As jazz, and the blues are America’s ...

For modern classical hornists wishing to explore a different style, the unaccompanied solo genre is a way of easing into swing and improvisation. Horn solo pieces by Dana Wilson (b.1946), Douglas Hill (b.1946), and ...

This thesis serves as an insight to modern jazz piano language at the turn of the 21st century by analyzing pianist Kenny Kirkland through six original transcriptions. An examination of Kirk ...

In 1957, legendary trumpeter Miles Davis traveled to Paris to record the soundtrack to Elevator to the Gallows. The film featured a completely improvised score, which the band recorded as they played to edited cuts of the ...

John Birks “Dizzy” Gillespie has been acknowledged for his profound impact on the development of the jazz styles of bebop and Afro/Cuban jazz, however previous assessments of his improvisational style with respect to his ...