Degree Name

Department

Music

College

Fine Arts and Communications

Defense Date

2024-05-30

Publication Date

2024-06-07

First Faculty Advisor

Brian Harker

First Faculty Reader

Jeremy Grimshaw

Honors Coordinator

Neil Thornock

Keywords

Jazz, Pedagogy, Improvisation, Institutionalization, Ethnography, Ethnomusicology

Abstract

Although traditionally an oral art form, the learning and teaching of jazz music has undergone a shift towards institutionalization and formalization in the last fifty years, principally in the form of method books and the presence of jazz in educational institutions. This study documents this trend by a comparison of jazz pedagogy experienced by and used by professional musicians in Utah with that which is recorded in Paul Berliner’s Thinking in Jazz. The informality of education for Berliner’s interlocutors contrasts starkly with the institutionalized education of most of the participants in this study.