Interpretation of results

In this section, results are interpreted in relation to previous research and the musical references presented in the introduction chapter.
Score-based approaches: original sheet music, lead sheets, indeterminate notation

Audio-based approaches: aural learning, working with audio backgrounds

Negotiating structure and musical language: approaching form, melody and harmony, expanding on musical language

Fidelity vs. creative expression: 'a healthy dose of disrespect', Focusing on the score, the context of the piece, the expression of the piece, the context of the performer, the improviser’s ‘voice’, improvisational freedom, and the room

Score-based approaches

Original sheet music

Working with original sheet scores as a starting point for performance and improvisation had the advantage that the same information was available to all performers, something that meant that ensembles of different sizes could spontaneously distribute parts among performers, as well as working out improvisational frameworks in a collaborative manner. Annotations were often added to these scores, which could relate to chord analysis, instrumentation, or details regarding form. This resembles the work processes of Roggen & Nyhus (2024), whose work processes were often based on making annotations, at least in an initial stage.

Working with original scores often resulted in more faithful readings of the source material, which might be explained by the fact that – as some performers expressed – was more difficult to distance oneself from the details of a highly specified score. The degree to which this was perceived to be a fruitful departure point seemed to be connected with properties such as instrumentation, density, and content. For example, it wasn’t considered practical to work directly from the original score of an orchestral work like Debussy's La mer, which led to the use of piano reductions during the process. This mirrors the work of the Bad Plus Trio, whose adaptation of The Rite of Spring was based on a transcription for two pianos.

Lead sheets

When it wasn’t a priority to preserve all the pitches of a particular , alternatives such as lead sheets were used, i.e., the standard type of notation used in jazz contexts. Due to their design, they were particularly useful for focusing on melody, giving experiment with other details; harmony, voicings, instrumentation, types of underlying accompaniment etc. This flexibility made it easy to adapt the same score to various musical settings and ensemble configurations. Due to the lessened degree of constraints, the format offered a lot of openness for performers to shape their own interpretations, which sometimes resulted in habitual ways of interpreting this type of score following jazz conventions.

At times, these score types seemed to need additional information to capture the desired level of detail, e.g. chord voicings and bass lines. One possible solution in such situations was to use an extended type of lead sheet, i.e. a lead sheet where such details are added. As described earlier, the approach of using more detailed notation for conveying certain musical material that cannot be adequately expressed using chord symbols mirrors Anders Jormin’s process of preparing scores for Bobo Stenson trio. The notion of “less is more”-arrangements that are flexible enough to be used in various constellations, also bears a certain resemblance to Uri Caine’s way of working with undefined/flexible systems, where staves are generally not restricted to present information related to one specific instrument (Cole, 2015).

One of the characteristic features of lead sheet format is the chord symbol. As stated here, it is a more or less universal system that provides improvisers with a harmonic overview and the flexibility to interpret individual chords and harmonic progressions in their individual way. Chord analysis were also perceived as limited in some respects, in particular when it comes to conveying horizontal dimensions of the music in question, or representing sonorities based on non-tertian harmony, such as the quartal and quintal harmony that are frequent in Hindemith’s writing. Another problematic aspect addressed was its inherent way of imposing a hierarchy on pitches, something which may not always be desired.

As Kernfeld points out, chord symbols say nothing about how a particular chord should be realized or what might be the next step of “breathing life into that realization” (p. 48). Apropos pitch hierarchies, Teriete (2020) addresses the problem of ‘root heaviness’ (Ger. Grundtonlastigkeit) and the risk that middle voices and voice leading are disregarded in musical passages. As Keith Jarrett puts it, voice-leading is “melody-writing in the center of the harmony”, something that easily gets ignored in lead sheet approaches:

It’s so different than what people think when they look at a lead sheet and build those blocks the way you learn harmony. They can’t get away from this structure of vertical playing with your left hand and then if you’re lucky, maybe a good idea in your right. (Jarrett in Iverson, 2009)

Endeavors to turn lines into blocks – to borrow Jarrett’s words – presented some tangible challenges when setting out to create harmonic interpretations of compositions that contained a high degree of linear writing, such as Hindemith’s Ludus Tonalis; attempting to translate music of this kind into chord-based representations invariably meant sacrificing nuances from the source material. This can be seen from the lens of what Teriete (2020) refers to as ‘verticalization’ (Ger. Vertikalisierung), something he points out to be pre-dominant in jazz like no other style. Teriete also presents a risk that the tendency to represent music primarily based on vertical relations seems to be increasing due to easily accessible apps like iReal Pro, where the user is only given a chord chart as the basis for performing a particular .

Such transformations, as Teriete warns us, carry with them the risk of turning compositions into empty ‘shells’, where performers can perform them without knowing the original. A similar risk has been pointed out in relation to lead sheets at large, something that relates to their reductionist nature. As trumpeter Nicholas Payton expresses it, reliance on such types of notation – as opposed to learning from the source – carries with it a risk that a multi-dimensional art form is reduced into a ”manageable packet of digestible information”, detached from its original context and expression (Payton in McCavana, 2021). This risk, of course, is present whether we are talking about lead sheet representations of compositions from jazz or Western classical music.

Ultimately, choosing and preparing lead sheets seems to be matter of balance; on one hand, the reduced amount of information is what which makes the lead sheet accessible, and that which affords improvisers the necessary space to create their own interpretations. But, on the other hand, if too much is stripped away, there’s a risk of ending up with watered-down versions that don’t do justice to the original music.

Indeterminate notation

When it comes to conveying aspects of the original work, score approaches based on indeterminate notation were assessed as particularly useful for focusing on specific building blocks. For this purpose, boxed notation was effective, especially with smaller units such as melodic or rhythmic motifs, but also for representing melodies of limited duration. Also, the use of indeterminate or approximate pitch notation could serve as a way of focusing on the rhythm and general outline of a given phrase. From a performer perspective, the alternative types of notation examined here required more preparation and explanation than other approaches, via written instructions or verbal instructions from an ensemble leader during rehearsal. In the constellations involved here – i.e., mainly musicians from a jazz background – using notation that closely resembles standard notation seemed to be a positive factor in that the material could be accessible with relative ease.

Regardless of the type of sheet music, there is a risk that the presence of a score interferes with the listening that is fundamental to improvisational practices. As pointed out by Ullén (in Bröndum, 2019), this can pose a challenge when working to graphical scores, since they limit your ability to interact and respond to the other performers. The collective listening and co-creation might not come into fruition to the same extent when there’s a detailed score present controlling the process, at least not unless the performers succeed in going beyond the score. Another aspect is that although the indeterminate notation gives the illusion that the music is improvised, there is still a hidden power dynamic at play;

In indeterminacy there is still a composer hidden behind the curtain—it doesn’t matter how open the score is and, even though John Cage wanted to remove the person, it is still someone’s vision that the musician is trying to bring to life. However, the end result may sound very similar. (Bröndum, 2019, p. 651)

Thus, the challenge when preparing new versions is to not end up creating a new type of score that is highly specified, notated in a way that creates a facade of improvisational freedom, where performers are required to comply with the highly specific intentions of an arranger instead of the original composer. When it came to the alternative types of scores that were created, it turned out that the most fruitful scores – from an improvisational perspective – were the ones that contained the least information, such as the collage score contained a small amount of phrases and building blocks taken from La mer, due to its openness. However, it should be recognized that this score came about after already having worked with the music in earlier versions; in this sense, the sparsely notated information seemed to act as triggers for musical events that, to some extent, were based on previous work with the piece. Seen this way, the collage score acted like a sort of memory tool, in that it helped us retrieve events from our memory, rather than something that was fully specified.

Once again, it’s a question of balance and priority; with the alternative types of notation, the question mainly seemed to revolve around what parameters to prioritize, and how much openness one wants to leave for the improvisers.

Audio-based approaches

Aural learning

Although not the main modus operandi for learning the repertoire, working with aural learning on selected pieces was found to be helpful in building an aural image of the material, which was further enhanced by also transposing melodies by ear. From a harmonic perspective, it seemed to focus attention on general tonal shifts rather than specific chords. The challenges presented were that it was time-consuming and demanding, especially for repertoire with a lot of harmonic movement, making it less suitable as a standard approach to group learning.

In jazz, learning music from recordings has been an integral part of the acquisition of repertoire since the release of the first jazz record in 1917. As John Hicks describes it in Berliner (1994), he initially memorizes the melody of a tune and reproduces it at the piano, then he copies the bass line before moving on to figure out the inner voices. Kenny Barron describes it as ”a matter of trial and error” (p. 75). Similar descriptions are common among jazz musicians, which might involve “singing along with rhythmic figures, melodies, chords, and solos” before one can successfully reproduce such elements on one’s instrument (Solli et al., 2022). Such procedures, however, are not commonplace in relation to Western classical repertoire, given the central role of the score. Still, there are performers that learn pieces this way, sometimes even before learning to read sheet music. For instance, we’ve already considered how young Hazel Scott learned much of her classical repertoire by listening to her mother, something that provided her with a solid basis for eventually improvising over the pieces (Chilton, 2008). Similarly, classical pianist and improviser Gabriela Montero has described learning much of her repertoire by ear, such as the Piano concerto in D major by Haydn with which she made her debut as a 9-year old.

Naden (2023) suggests that aural learning of classical pieces can be an efficient way of bringing more self-efficacy to the process of performing classical repertoire, i.e., it can strengthen the performers confidence in how she can learn and carry out a skill. However, similar to the experiences described above, Naden points out that such procedures are not always practical due to their time-consuming nature. Here, it can be added that aural-based learning approach to classical pieces might be particularly time-consuming if they are treated as thick works, to borrow Davies’ terminology, i.e. works with a high degree of specification. But if the goal is to learn the melody and harmonic foundation, the approach that Hicks describes (in Berliner, 1994, p. 75) of starting with the melody and bass lines might be an alternative, before moving to inner voices. It can also be added that it’s somewhat problematic to characterize it as a disadvantage that activities related to aural learning are ‘time-consuming’; in one sense, it can be precisely the time invested in learning something this way that allow performers to internalize a particular material.

Working with audio backgrounds

One advantage of working with audio backgrounds was that it provided a basis for the creative exploration of new ideas within a fixed framework, sometimes involving a mixture of composition and improvisation. However, the static nature of the recordings could also seem detrimental to improvisational creativity, especially when working with multiple repetitions. When applied in a group situation, audio recordings seemed to offer creative impulses for performers to expand on the sounds

One of the strong arguments that one could make for working with audio recordings is its focus on listening and reacting, without musicians having to decipher a score at the same time. There’s also a simplicity to the approach that makes it usable; that one can, in principle, bring any recording to a musical situation and see what impulses it will give for improvisation. This also gives the opportunity of improvising based on music for any conceivable setting, e.g. orchestra music, music for specific instruments, music that might be difficult to realize otherwise.

When it comes to improvising together with backgrounds, there’s a long tradition of using so-called play-along’s in jazz, as developed by Jamey Aebersold in the late 1960s. While arguably important for many musicians as a tool when practicing improvisation, they also carry certain risks, such as musicians becoming predisposed to hearing a song in a certain way, in a certain key and at a certain tempo (Thibeault, 2022). What's worse, performers who practice this way may also become inclined to ignore the important interaction with other performers:

When you’re playing with live musicians, if you treat them like a Play-A-Long, uhhh— no good. And I’m cool in a way if the player doesn’t really react to the rhythm section. It’s a choice. But on the other hand, sometimes I hear players just playing their clichés and their licks and their exercises and stuff that they worked out. And it’s like they’re practicing with me, playing live, and I don’t like that much. (Haerle in Thibault, 2022, p.105)

While such a tradition is not as established in Western classical music, the use of overdubbed improvisations holds a particular potential for approaching classical works.

Negotiating structure and musical language

Approaching form

In terms of adapting musical forms, the most common way of approaching form was through the use of repetition. Not only is this a common element to jazz performance – typically in the form of a ‘chorus’ consisting of one or several sections – it also follows ancient forms of improvising over repeated units such as ‘theme and variations’, as well as forms based on repeated bass lines, such as chaconne and passacaglia. As West (2022) describes it, the act of establishing a repetitive unit when improvising over classical pieces can serve a number of functions:

Whether it is several measures or a particular section, the repetition of a musical unit can benefit internalization of the chord changes in a simplified form before the process of building on the harmonic foundation of the repertoire through improvisation. (West, 2022, p. 15)

When applied in a pedagogical setting, each repetition can ”ease the students into incremental exploration of variability, perhaps helping the students to move on and refocus after some perceived error.” (p.15). As shown here, units of different length can provide different foundations for improvisations; chords, ostinatos, longer passages, one or several sections taken from the original.

An approach that wasn’t as prominent here was the extending of musical passages, for instance through staying on a given chord. As seen in the examples of Bobo Stenson Trio’s Wedding Song from Poniky and Dave Douglas’s Grand Chorale, such approaches can yield fruitful results. One type of extension can be found in the cadenza, which – in jazz – typically involves holding the penultimate chord of a tune, often a ballad, while the soloist plays or sings a rubato cadenza before cue:ing in the rest of the ensemble for the final chord. Looking at its historical predecessor, from Baroque music and onwards, such an extension is often marked by a fermata over the tonic 6-4 chord that appears near the end of a concerto movement or aria. Here, thus, lies a potential for another way of adding improvised elements to 20^th-century works, one that connect with historic examples.

The act of adding new passages for improvisation was often a part of creating new versions, mainly in the form of introductions, transitions and ending. This also has a long lineage in music history, as seen for example in the improvised preludes and interludes of 19th-century performance practice. In Cole’s (2019) terminology, such additions can be referred to as syntagmatic additions, as an addition that alter the linear progression of musical events from the original (p.213). When an added improvisation fulfills the role of a transition between two sections, as was the case with Pastorale in D, it can be described as what Cole calls a syntagmatic transition, where the added material connects two sections of the original composition. Such transitions are frequent in Johanna Summer’s (2021) interpretation of Ravel, where she weaves long, improvised lines around Ravel’s thematic material, lines that eventually lead to other excerpts taken from his music. In contrast to Cole, it should be noted that I’ve not conceptualized improvised sections that are based on repetitions as added sections. This is reflective of how I saw these sections; although the improvisation in itself involves an addition of something not that is not present in the original, it made more sense to see it as based on repetitions of something existing in the piece, from the viewpoint of connecting the improvisation with the composed elements. 

Melody and harmony

Melody was seen as an important guide for improvisations overall, and could serve as a destination for open improvisations, as well as a something that could be taken further through improvisation. When it came to atonal melodies, such as twelve-tone music, we would circumvent challenges by not improvising directly over melodies or harmonic progressions. This somewhat resembles the approach of The Bad Plus Trio, who keeps improvisation is to a minimum in their versions of music by Webern and Stravinsky (Iverson, 2009). However, in contrast to The Bad Plus Trio we didn’t decrease the amount of improvisation with the pieces, but opted for open, collective improvisation. An alternative for truly improvising in a twelve-tone based idiom, as presented in de Graaf (2017), could have been to work with cells based on twelve-tone rows, such as tetrachords or other segments. However, as de Graaf concludes, this approach is more suited for composition, due to the inherent complexity with improvising in this idiom.

When it came to harmonic strategies, many of the approaches used here are commonly used in contexts of jazz improvisation, such as finding guide tone lines, connecting chords via common notes, extrapolating material from the melody, using general scales and modal thinking as ways of opening up harmonic progression, etc. Such approaches often worked well, particularly when dealing with harmonic progressions that were based on more functional relationships. However, when faced with more complex languages – such as those found in the music of Takemitsu, Dutilleux and Crawford Seeger – it became clear that traditional ways of viewing harmony, chords and chord-scale thinking were too limited. In such cases, playing, listening and adapting to these sounds repeatedly worked seemed , in combination with incorporating sounds in compositional work.

Expanding on musical language

The processes of going beyond the music – through composition or improvisation – were largely rooted in pitch-based structures such as melodic motives, thematic material, and melodic/harmonic principles. In this sense, it resembles Johanna Summer’s way of expanding on the music of classical composers as found on her album Resonanzen (2023), with the slight difference that Summer seems to retain the melodic contours of the source material that she bases her improvisations on. The act of ’leaving the piece’ to instead create something new, based on departure points found in the music, can also be likened to Roggen and Nyhus’s (2024) work processes at a later stage, where they would eventually leave the source material of Sibelius’ music to create new music, music that can’t always be traced to the source material. One obvious difference to the approaches for this project here is that Roggen and Nyhus’s approach is partly degree text-based, often using phrases – and fragments of phrases – as impulses for new creations, sometimes as a way of exploring new meanings and subtexts of such material.

The use of improvisation as a way of expanding on – or leaving – a composition is also a part of the practice of professional organ improvisers, as presented in Johansson (2008). In these situations, the score is used for providing inspiration or ideas that the improviser takes further. By analyzing the musical parameters that gives a piece its identity, performers can then transfer and apply these ideas in improvisations that might sound like “pieces that could have been made by the same composer” (p. 115). Here, there’s a resemblance to the approach taken for Dépaysement, where I used Dutilleux’s concept of ‘progressive growth’ as a model when developing the thematic material. However, in contrast to the cited example, Dépaysement wasn’t created with an ambition of trying to make the music sound like it could have been written by Dutilleux, but rather as an aspiration to apply a principle taken from his writing to my own thematic material. Seen this way, the prospect of working from ideas and principles – rather than pitch-based properties, i.e., melody and harmony – shows a particular potential, as it allows performers to draw on the musical language of their choice as they expand on impulses found in a musical material.

 Fidelity vs. creative expression

A 'healthy dose of disrespect' 

The idea of a healthy dose of disrespect was salient in the reflections on the musical processes. Given the central role of this idea, I'll return to it under the section The ethics of reimagining. For now, it can be recognized that the wording may come across as harsh; disrespect in this context shouldn’t be interpreted as an active attempt of being offensive towards composers or works. As Metheny points out, it is rather a question of going against the expected, of seeking an alternative:

Maybe disrespect is too strong a word, but it’s the sense that ‘Yeah, that’s been done, but let’s try to do this a little differently this time.’ Ornette [Coleman] has a heavy dose of that. He’s a rebel. If you say ‘left,’ he’s going to say ‘right’. (Metheny in Woodard, 1992). 

I also presented different focal points that might be helpful when navigating the tension between ‘fidelity to the work’ and creative expression. These were; focusing on the score, the context of the piece, the expression of the piece, the context of the performer, improvisational freedom, the improviser’s ‘voice’, and the room. We’ll now consider how these approaches might relate to some dominating notions of authenticity in relation to music performance. 

First, it should be pointed out that academic discourse on authenticity in music is, more often than not, based on premises derived from Western classical music performance. This bears a significance for how dominating notions are articulated, something that becomes further visible as we approach classical works with our improvisational glasses on. This also causes some “false friends”, i.e. concepts that are labeled similarly but differ in meaning across contexts. For instance, if we take the approach of focusing on the score, where the premise is that we are going to integrate improvisation into our performance of it, it becomes obvious that the notion can't be directly equated with the idea of being true to the score. Being true to the score suggests a highly literal reading – sometimes referred to as score-compliance authenticity – which, in some views, is a requirement for actually playing the work in question. One such notion asserts that it is the ”authentic instance of a musical work” that “faithfully reproduces the work’s constitutive properties” (Davies, 2001, p. 227). With the idea of focusing on the score, however, it’s a question of adhering to the score to a high degree despite the fact that we are approaching it as improvising musicians. In this case, it’s expected that some deviations will be made, at least in the form of added improvisational elements.

The idea presented here of focusing on the expression of the piece – as in an expressive quality found in the music – is not prevalent in the discourse on musical authenticity, especially not in the sense of prioritizing expressive qualities over pitches. This is perhaps not surprising, since the concept is, on the one hand, quite remote from traditional notions of work authenticity, and, on the other hand, far from being a common approach to improvising over a piece of music. Nevertheless, as the results suggests, it can be a useful approach for guiding the recreated versions based on pieces – or passages of pieces – where pitch isn’t a main priority. Here, we can see a certain connection to Johansson’s (2008) description of how professional organ improvisers can approach expanding on a given composition, where things such as mood, styles, and effective gestures can serve as focal objects when expanding on a piece of music, approaches that might yield vastly different results than working from pitch-based elements.

The notion of focusing on the context of the piece can be seen through what Dodd calls interpretive authenticity. Here, a performance is authentic to the extent that it succeeds in disclosing something of the meaning of a work: it reveals something about what it is really like, which might require the performer to go beyond the intra-musical realm. One of the examples mentioned here looked at the context for von Koch’s piece Utanmyra-variationer, where elements of the music were reinforced by connecting it with  which it’s based on. In a similar way, Dodd (2020) takes the example of Andreas Staier, whose partly improvised version of Mozart’s Rondo Alla Turca exaggerating its allusions to Turkish style as a way of reinforcing aspects of Mozart’s conception of the piece. Parallels can also be drawn to the Mahler adaptions done by Uri Caine, who repeatedly works with incorporating references to Jewish culture, as a way of connecting the music to lived experiences of Mahler, as well as those of Caine himself (Cole, 2015). The importance of connecting to the meaning of a work is also emphasized by many big band composers in Dorrell's study (2015) on how to integrate improvisation in large-scale compositions.

Focusing on the context of the performer relates in some ways to the notion of tradition-authenticity; that the way that a particular piece is played somehow follows conventions of the tradition that the performer is a part of. As described in relation to D’un vieux jardin, adopting a way of playing the chord voicings in a Bill Evans-related style served to reinforce aspects of the performance that were helpful when ‘bridging the gap’ between the piece and the trio setting. However, it would be a misrepresentation to say that there is an audible emphasis on the jazz tradition in the examples presented here; for one thing, there are not many examples of the swing phrasing that we associate with the jazz tradition. This is somewhat reflective of the multiplicity of musical influences that has contributed to shaping the musical universe that may be labeled as Scandinavian jazz, where tradition might not be emphasized to the same extent – or in the same way – as in other jazz contexts (Bjerstedt, 2014, p. 35).

The idea of focusing on the improviser’s voice corresponds somewhat with the notion of authenticity as self-expression, as described by Hagberg (2021) and Bjerstedt (2014). As Hagberg points out, this type of authenticity is fundamental for the aesthetics of improvisational artistic practices. However, focusing on the improviser’s voice, as presented here, is not only a question of self-expression; it always plays out in relation to a particular composition whose qualities the performer strives to preserve. As Herbie Hancock (2014) expressed it when approaching Ravel’s Piano concerto in G major: “I wanted to use the things that Ravel already had in there to stay true to him and true to me" (p. 289). I think this is generally reflective of the processes described here; that they involved a dialog between oneself as a performer and the composer, through the work.

The idea of focusing on one’s improvisational voice, in a given situation, shouldn’t be equated with using the composition as a vehicle for one’s own expression. Such an approach has been questioned by Dodd (2020), among others:

[U]nlike the performer of a jazz standard, the successful performer of a work of Western classical music does not use the work she performs as a vehicle for conveying her own artistic personality. (Dodd, 2020, p. 106)

While the idea of using compositions as ‘vehicles’ might be expected to raise concerns in relation to classical works, it is also questioned among jazz performers, as expressed in the quote below from saxophonist Branford Marsalis. Here, Marsalis reacts to the trend of jazz musicians taking pop numbers and turning them into something unrecognizable for the listeners:

It's just the idea that there are people who believe that music should be a vehicle that they use to participate in their own greatness. It’s more amusing to me than anything. … I don’t use songs as a vehicle to glorify myself. I’m going to play whatever is required to make the song successful. (Marsalis in Milkowski, 2012)

A perhaps better way of understanding how the idea of focusing on the voice can be compatible with conveying something that is true to a particular composition can be found in the concept of storytelling, as described in Bjerstedt’s (2014) interview-based study of Swedish jazz improvisers. Not only do the informants emphasize the importance of the instrumental “voice” and that the improviser shows herself as a human being, they often describe this voice as linked to the idea of storytelling, something which is related to emotional content, presence, openness, conviction, listening to others as well as one’s ‘inner voice’ (Bjerstedt, 2016). Storytelling doesn’t necessarily refer to a narrative structure, but is interpreted by Bjerstedt in a non-literal, non-narrative manner as a statement, as an expression of the player’s own emotional experience (p. 4). Having a sense of storytelling can play an important role in integrating improvisation with large-scale compositions. As described by several big band composers in Dorrell’s (2015) study, it relates to how the soloist follows the story of the piece and the greater overall arc of the composition. It can also be a question of telling something that is “dramatic and important to the meaning of the piece” (Schneider in Nybøe, 2012, p. 123). 

Focusing on improvisational freedom can, in a sense, also be seen as a type of tradition-authenticity, given the centrality of improvisation in the jazz tradition. It can also be seen as related to the idea of authenticity as self-expression, as in Hagberg’s (2021) description of how Thelonious Monk subverts the conventional framework of a 12-bar blues:

[Monk] hammers chords that are so altered (and not just extended) that they threaten to “turn over” the harmony; that is, some are so heavily altered with flatted 5ths, augmented 5ths, flatted and raised 9ths, and flatted 13ths, that one can’t quite discern the basic chord, or even the basic function of the chord … But Monk does this so that this becomes more about what one knows than what one hears – he is improvising in the space between sound and imagination. And precisely at the moment of the close of the second chorus of the head, just before the improvised solos start (and, thus, the last possible moment), he plays what one expected but did not get all along (0.50), that is, the standard extended, but not altered, chord.  (p. 221)

My objection with terms like self-expression and self-authenticity – and a reason for not having employed them myself – is they imply a somewhat limited scope in relation to music performance, as they seemingly suggest that the expression of the artistic self is a primary performance goal. I don’t believe this to be fully reflective of the encounters presented here, since there is simply so much more at stake than expressing an artistic self; the performer is always a part of a larger ecology, and the artistic self always plays out in dialogue with other actants. There’s also a risk that labels such as self-authenticity or work-authenticity lead us to create a dichotomy between performer-based and work-based perspectives, which doesn't seem conducive to the fruitful meeting we are interested in.

A larger perspective, in this sense, can be found in the idea of directing one’s attention towards the room, which largely corresponds with Bertinetto’s (2019) view of authenticity as ’truthfulness to the moment’. In this view, the emphasis is on responding in a creatively appropriate way that resonates with the environment and the given situation; with the "here and now" (p.44). As Corbussen (2017) reminds us, given the complex interconnectedness of musical performances, the here and now in improvisation is always contingent of the various actants that are involved; e.g. the composition at hand, its visual or aural representation, the performers, their instruments, the audience, the venue, the acoustic properties of the room, etc. This, thus, requires performers to respond to the challenges and the affordances of the contingent situation, in interaction with each other as well as the tradition of their practice (Bertinetto, 2019, p.24).

The descriptions of the room also puts a lot of emphasis of connecting the improvisation with the composition in question, through its sounding manifestation in the room. This was a recurrent theme throughout the discussions; that improvisations are genuinely based on the piece at hand, whether it be its musical language, its particular expression, or something else. What was presented as obstacles to this end was a reliance on pattern-based playing, which, together with the aforementioned chord-scale thinking, may not only cause friction with the musical language of the piece, it might limit our ability to respond appropriately to what we hear. This is a common concern in relation to the ever-increasing amount of method books for jazz improvisation; that an over-reliance on pattern-based playing and chord-scale thinking – what Thibeault (2022) refer to as conceptual technologies – interfere with our ability to listen and react to our surroundings. As Joakim Milder expressed it, entering the world of a composition may cause us to realize our limitations; that the things that we have burdened our language with are simply not valid anymore. However, when allowing ourselves to truly became impregnated by the music, it may help us to “wash away everything that is there that is mechanical in our playing” (Interview with Milder, 2022-01-18).

To put it another way, being true to the room – and true to the moment – requires an attentiveness to the needs of the music; as Karin Hammar expressed it, that we listen to “what the music wants us to say” (Panel discussion, 2024-03-08). This, it can be argued, requires a kind of listening that reaches beyond expressing the artistic self of the performer, the conventions of a given tradition, or the intentions of the composer. And, as suggested earlier, it may require a healthy dose of disrespect, as we realize that what the music needs in a given moment might be something different than what the composer heard when writing in the first place.