Music Studies Colloquia

Improvisation—An Expression of Timbre

Abstract: Jazz histories often track the development of solo improvisation to buttress a teleology of the music’s maturation into an art form between the late 1920s and mid-1940s. To craft such a narrative, historians focus almost exclusively on non-vocal instruments played by virtuosic male musicians, which effectively circumvents more commercial vocal-dominated jazz styles dominated by women. Theorists have centered almost exclusively on pitch, using melodic development and harmonic inventiveness to prove a solo’s musical value. Such a myopic approach eclipses the role of both timbre and women vocalists in pioneering jazz improvisation. This presentation seeks to intervene in these historical and analytical biases by examining vocal timbres in women’s jazz solos. Using iZotope RX Audio Editor, I perform a spectral analysis of solos by Adelaide Hall, Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, Betty Carter, and Abbey Lincoln. Ultimately, I seek to refresh our understanding of improvisation by turning to that which is vocal, commercial, and timbral.

Steph Doktor (Temple University)
Bio: Steph Doktor is Assistant Professor of Music Theory at Temple University, and her research and teaching ask, “How can we hear inequality?” Her current book project, Reconstructing Whiteness: Race in the Early Jazz Marketplace (under contract with University of California Press), examines how white Americans used jazz to rehearse racial privilege. Doktor’s research has appeared in the Journal of the American Musicological Society, the Journal of the Society for American Music, Jazz & Culture, and American Music, and she is the recipient of multiple publication awards. She is also Associate Editor of the Journal of Jazz Studies and will be co-authoring all future editions of Norton’s jazz textbooks.