[+] Gunther, John G. “Transmigrations of Body and Soul: Three Contemporary Interpretations of a Jazz Classic Analyzed and Applied to Performance.” In Five Perspectives on “Body and Soul”: And Other Contributions to Music Performance Studies, ed. Claudia Emmenegger and Olivier Senn, 61-76. Zurich: Chronos, 2011.
Transcribing jazz improvisations should entail more than note-by-note recording, especially for advanced performance students. Three additional steps reinforce the pedagogical benefits of transcription: an overall description of what occurs in an improvisation, an assessment of the musical parameters that the improvisation highlights, and an application of that assessment to creating improvisations in a similar style. Analyses of three interpretations of Body and Soul by Bill Frisell, Cassandra Wilson, and Keith Jarrett encourage three different approaches to improvisation. From Frisell, an improvisational model includes incorporating looping technology for repeating aleatoric motives. From Wilson, an improvisational model encourages a singer to replace the notes of a song while keeping its lyrics. Finally, from Jarrett, an improvisational model provides a performer with preset motives that can be manipulated with a large-scale formal trajectory in mind.
Works: Johnny Green: Body and Soul as performed by Bill Frisell (64-66), Cassandra Wilson (66-69), and Keith Jarrett (70-75).
Sources: Johnny Green: Body and Soul (61-62).
Index Classifications: 1900s, Jazz
Contributed by: Nathan Blustein
