The Relevance of Jazz History in Twenty-First Century British Jazz Practice and Pedagogy

  • Katherine Williams Leeds College of Music
Keywords: jazz history, jazz pedagogy, Britian

Abstract

In this discussion of jazz education, I contrast the development of traditions and practices in Britain with the indigenous practices of North America. In both cases, I categorize methods of jazz education into informal and formal schools of training, with the former focusing on early schemes of oral learning, and the latter on later codified systems. History has a particularly important role in three main areas of jazz education: (1) transgenerational mentors, (2) learning from recordings, and (3) repertory bands.

Author Biography

Katherine Williams, Leeds College of Music

Katherine Williams is a Senior Lecturer in Jazz and Music Production at Leeds College of Music (UK). She studied musicology at King’s College London (BMus), and the University of Nottingham (MA, PhD).  Her doctoral research (2012) concerned the application of values and traditions from classical music to jazz, comparing the ways in which this has occurred in Britain and in America. She has published articles based on this research in Jazz Perspectives, the Proceedings of the 9th Nordic Jazz Conference (Finland), and Per Musi (Brazil). She is also an instrumental tutor (classical and jazz saxophone) at Anglia Ruskin University in Cambridge, and is active as a freelance classical and jazz saxophonist.

 


Published
2012-10-15
Issue
Vol 3 No 2: (Spring 2013)
Section
Roundtable

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