Name: Emilio Parrilla Garcia-Pelayo
Main Subject: Jazz Clarinet
Research Coaches: Patrick Schenkius and Philip Curtis
Title of Research:
Jazz and Storytelling: Creative and performances applications
Research Question:
How I can use storytelling in jazz composition, improvisation and stage performance?
Research Process:
With the aim to research the storytelling as creative inspiration, I have been working with different musicians and projects at different moments of musical creation: composition, improvisation and rehearsal. I have created Storytelling jazz project, as a laboratory to experiment the artistic relation between them. For the second part of my research, storytelling as a tool in jazz performance, I looked for direct connections in the history of jazz. Little by little, I focused the research on other cultures and music. I researched different storyteller traditions, and I choose four of them as source of inspiration (West African “griot”, Spanish “trovo”, Indian “Kathak” or Korean “Pansori”). I focus my attention in the way those traditions relate storyteller and music, looking for new ideas for my own performances. I have also done a brief approach to the storyteller’s history. This part of my research had two basics objectives: to recognize the discipline and the especial characteristics, and to collect ideas for my own performance. I have done three interviews with three artists related with storytelling or jazz. My purpose was to learn from their different experiences in the relation music/jazz and storytelling: the storyteller; musician and storyteller; jazz musician. Pepeperez is the pure storyteller, he is not a musician and he normally works without music. Kim Dong-Won is a musician and is really related with the traditional storyteller from Korea. Simon Baker, as a jazz musician, works normally with Korean storytellers.
Summary of Results:
This research focuses the attention on two directions: the storyteller as a source of inspiration and as a tool to facilitate the communication with the audience during the concert, always looking for the maximum integration between both disciplines. To analyze the possibilities of storytelling, we have to recognize three different dimensions of it: storytelling as human communication; as narrative part of arts; and as an independent discipline. The relation between storytelling and jazz has many possibilities: professional, musicological and artistic. I describe some of these possibilities.
The stories motivate the active participation of audience, stage and audience as a common creative space.