He’s been sharing his Deep Thoughts on this website for a while, but now Birmingham-based Steve Tromans is doing his double thing – philosophical discourse and jazz performance – on Soundcloud. He writes: “I’ve recently recorded an improvised talk on jazz… Read More ›
Steve Tromans, jazz pianist and scholar, has an article called Myth, Progress, and Motion in Jazz Practice with the Standard Repertoire now published by the French jazz journal Epistrophy. In his own words it includes “a recording made during a jazz-research lecture at Birmingham Conservatoire,… Read More ›
By Steve Tromans “If Charlie Parker were a gunslinger, there’d be a whole lot of dead copycats.” – Charles Mingus [1] “To follow, to really follow, is not to follow.” – Gary Peters [2] This month, in my Deep Thought for… Read More ›
By Steve Tromans “My experience is of such a high level of emotion on stage that sometimes I’ve been frightened by what I hear. It’s exploding with such intensity and feeling.” – Gerry Hemingway [1] “We are not in the… Read More ›
By Steve Tromans “It’s not what it sounds like that interests me, it’s what it is.” – Cornelius Cardew [1] “The future is… at the heart of experience in the durational present.” – Sandra Rosenthal [2] Last month’s Deep Thought… Read More ›
By Steve Tromans “If you believe in the world you precipitate events, however inconspicuous, that elude control.” – Gilles Deleuze [1] “There is more philosophy in one sound than in a million words … As long as we continue to… Read More ›
By Steve Tromans “Once you become aware of this force for unity of life, you can’t ever forget it. It becomes part of everything you do.” – John Coltrane [1] “Nothing ends, since nothing has begun, but everything is transformed.” – Gilles Deleuze… Read More ›
By Steve Tromans “Despite many linkages to jazz history, his music sounded neither derivative nor imitative.” – Ted Gioia, on Charles Mingus.[1] “The present can function as it does only because its activity incorporates past and future.” – Sandra Rosenthal.[2] This month’s… Read More ›
By Steve Tromans For the first Deep Thought article of the new year, I’ve decided to offer the transcript of a talk I gave earlier this month at Birmingham University. The event was the Royal Musical Association’s research conference, and… Read More ›
By Steve Tromans “The greatest thing I can do to pay respect to a jazz musician of the past is to be a jazz musician of the present.” – James Falzone [1] “Only that which has no history is definable.”… Read More ›
By Steve Tromans “For [Louis] Armstrong, time is elastic, capable of infinite reshaping, unbound by artificial divisions into equal beats.” – Scott DeVeaux[1] “It is quite possible to divide an object, but not an act.” – Henri Bergson[2] This article is… Read More ›
By Steve Tromans “Man, if you have to ask what jazz is, you’ll never know.” – Louis Armstrong “Practice-as-research is a knowledge-political intervention.” – Susan Melrose [1] This second research article for thejazzbreakfast follows on from the concerns of its predecessor (see… Read More ›
A question of definition. By Steve Tromans “A thing is when it isn’t doing.” – Brian Massumi [1] “Jazz is unpredictable and won’t behave itself” – J. J. Johnson [2] These two opening quotes have important consequences for our understanding of both… Read More ›
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