Beyond Modern Jazz: The Evolution of Postmodern Jazz Performance and Composition from 1969 to the Present

Abstract

In the following paper, I will address what I perceive to be a gap in scholarship regarding the evolution of African-American classical music (popularly referred to as jazz) following the end of its primary phase of development, which I would refer to as the pre- modern and modern periods, and which I define as stretching roughly from the turn of the last century until the end of the 1960s. To this end, I will borrow from concepts of postmodernism as expressed by Jean-Francois Lyotard, James Morley, and Kenneth Gloag, in order to attempt to define what I feel it means within the context of the jazz lineage. In the process of examining this post-history, I will bring particular focus to the contributions of two key figures, Keith Jarrett and Wynton Marsalis. I will also look at a series of my own compositions and consider where they fit into the postmodern paradigm.