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Contemporary Jazz Composition

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The phenomenon of contemporary jazz composition is not well represented in jazz literature and academic sources. Although composers in this genre have shown an enormous development and a clear evolution in terms of style, form, technique and orchestration in the last forty years, there is little scholarly material in print on the subject. With the culmination of the swing era and the near-disappearance of the big bands, jazz composition morphed rapidly leaving almost no trace in academic writing of its evolution, more evidently since the 1960’s. Ron Miller states, “traditionally, a jazz composition was an arrangement for big band that was composed by the arranger. Most of the earlier jazz composition textbooks (and there were few) took that approach.” …show more content…

Very few jazz books try to expand the harmonic and compositional language, and rarely discuss composing for small ensemble. This lack of pedagogical material in reference to contemporary compositional trends in this style has created a gulf between the jazz that is currently composed and recorded by some of its more modern artists, and the one being taught in the majority of institutions. In this same sense, one of the more relevant musical disciplines that remains unexplored in jazz is counterpoint although it opens up a broad pallet of options for the composer, as William Russo states, “moreover, polyphonic jazz has a great potential—why not develop

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