This launched a discussion about whether this kind of descriptive research can be done without making value-judgments, particularly if one uses the hazardous word “simple” to describe harmonic structure.

Another paper, by Michael Ruesenberg, had some interesting source material on the continuing quest to understand – psychologically, neurophysiologically – the practice of improvisation. Rusenberg will be presenting this work more fully at the Darmstadt Jazz Forum later this month. The conclusion is, that although research work in this area may be moving forwards fast, but that these processes remain “shrouded in mystery,” ie deeply unanalysable.

Stuart Nicholson gave a paper about jazz and the BBC. Stuart does deserve some credit in this domain: there has been a discernible upward movement in the quota of British jazz in the main programmes since Stuart presented his last Jazz Services-initiated paper at an open session attended by the controllers of Radios 2 and 3.

Stuart pointed out shortcomings which result from the BBC outsourcing so much content to outside producers, and lamented the fact that there is – probably uniquely in Europe – no single person at  the BBC with strategic or oversight responsibility or accountability for formulating policy on jazz programming.  While there was praise from around the table for the quality of programming from outside producers, the discussion after Stuart’s speech unearthed interesting cases where the commissioning process has led to the involvement of people not above suspicion, and cases where commentators have wanted to apply a smell test.