School for Cool: The Academic Jazz Program and the Paradox of Institutionalized Creativity [Hardcover]

Jazz was born on the streets, grew up in the clubs, and will dieso some fearat the university. Facing dwindling commercial demand and the gradual disappearance of venues, many aspiring jazz musicians today learn their craft, and find their careers, in one of the many academic programs that now offer jazz degrees.?School for Cool?is their story. Going inside the halls of two of the most prestigious jazz schools aroundat Berklee College of Music in Boston and the New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music in New YorkEitan Y. Wilf tackles a formidable question at the heart of jazz today: can creativity survive institutionalization??

Few art forms epitomize the anti-institutional image more than jazz, but its precisely at the academy where jazz is now flourishing. This shift has introduced numerous challenges and contradictions to the musics practitioners. Solos are transcribed, technique is standardized, and the whole endeavor is plastered with the label high arta far cry from its freewheeling days. Wilf shows how students, educators, and administrators have attempted to meet these challenges with an inventive spirit and a robust drive to preserveand fosterwhat they consider to be jazzs central attributes: its charisma and unexpectedness. He also highlights the unintended consequences of their efforts to do so. Ultimately, he argues, the gap between creative practice and institutionalized schooling, although real, is often the product of our efforts to close it.?

Eitan Y. Wilfis assistant professor of anthropology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Acknowledgments

1 Introduction: The Academic Jazz Program as a Hybrid

2 Contexts and Histories: The Search for Cultural Legitimacy and the Reconfiguration of Obsolete Jazz Scenes

3 “Think-Tank Music”: Public Ambivalences and Contradictions

4 Charisma Infusion: Bringing the “Street” Back inló'