Paper for University of Sydney

Research Seminar, 2006:

Susan Lever

Jazz, Modernism and Satire: David Foster and the Fiction of the late twentiethcentury

Site : http://www.academia.edu/461172/Jazz_Modernism_and_Satire_David_Foster_and_the_Fiction_of_the_late_twentieth

PDF disponible sur site.

Over the past ten years, I have become a regular attender of jazz performancesand, though not particularly knowledgeable about jazz, I have learnt to judge thedifference between a performance whose every detail is more or less rehearsed and‘composed’, and those where the audience is witness to the creation of music. Asyou will know, modern jazz bands in general adopt the practice of establishing atheme (sometimes a well-known ‘standard’, sometimes a recent composition),then pursuing variations with each musician taking it in turns to riff. Most of thetime, the riffs are pretty well agreed in advance—but there are moments, particularly when an attentive atmosphere has been established, when one sensesthat the musicians genuinely are composing as part of their performance. Earlier this year, I attended a concert of Mike Nock’s current trio where, after the bandhad performed several of his compositions (all available in recorded form on thelatest CD), Nock turned to his bass player, Brett Hirst and drummer, Toby Hall,and invited them to improvise. What followed was a tentative presentation of anidea by Hirst, picked up by Hall, that gained confidence and pace until Nock  joined in on keyboard and the whole piece built to a crescendo a long way from its beginnings. The musicians were having fun, clearly surprised and amused aboutthe direction in which the playing moved, and the audience enjoyed the knowledgethat they were witnessing a particular moment of creativity by gifted musicians.This musical excursion will never make it to CD; it ranged across so many ideasthat—if it was possible to recall its details and analyse them—it might be regardedas messy and incoherent. Still, the musicians were laughing and the audience wasthrilled, aware that they had been privileged to share an unscripted excess of creative energy.