[lexicon] I.

 

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ARTISTIC AND EPISTEMOLOGICAL PREMISE

 

Performance as Musical Knowledge

 

To approach performance as knowledge is neither to claim that every artistic action produces valid knowledge nor to subordinate practice to theory. It is to recognize that musical understanding may be enacted, embodied, tested, and revised through procedures inseparable from doing.

 

Jazz knowledge is frequently procedural, tacit, and relational. A performer may know how to establish or displace time, inflect a phrase, navigate harmony, accompany a soloist, anticipate a cue, or redirect an ensemble without stating every operative principle. Such knowledge is situated in particular bodies, instruments, technologies, spaces, pedagogies, and histories; relational because it emerges among performers, listeners, repertoires, recordings, institutions, and environments; and interpretative because performance requires judgment under conditions that cannot be fully predetermined.

 

An ensemble’s knowledge does not reside only in separate competencies. It emerges through listening, anticipation, support, interruption, repetition, risk, and collective memory. Apparent spontaneity is enabled by accumulated vocabularies and coordination among differences. The ensemble is therefore a dynamic musical and social formation.

 

This premise has methodological consequences. Rehearsal, recording, and performance function not only as preparation or presentation, but as inquiry. Rhythmic instability may expose conflicting assumptions about pulse; harmonic disagreement, divergent systems of hearing; a soloist’s resistance, the limits of an arrangement. Changes in amplification or spatial organization may redistribute audibility, agency, and form.

 

The residency supports artistic development alongside clarification of operative knowledge. Participants examine how methods are learned, vocabularies transmitted, decisions authorized, materials transformed, labor organized, and expertise articulated.