Trailing the Jazz Workshop is a trailing research study investigating aspects of activities and goals relevant for the development of higher jazz education, by taking both the student and the teacher perspectives into account. This report describes background factors for the project; a theoretical framework and the research methodology that has been employed to trail the project; an outline of the main results from the study; and a discussion of how these results can be utilised to develop higher jazz education.
All the music was created by students, but the five large ensemble projects varied in how agency were distributed among participants, which in turn was connected to how the music they worked with was created, rehearsed and performed. Some projects utilised a collaborative working mode through varying degrees of collective improvisation. Other projects employed a hierarchical ensemble structure, centering the composed score and a conductor. In more collaborative projects, teachers were often central in guiding the process, whereas teachers in projects with a hierarchical structure were more in the background. This indicates that collaborative creativity in large ensembles may require experienced guidance in educational projects. When students without the experience of a teacher are given more responsibility, they may fall back on established and traditional ensemble working modes.