Keywords

This chapter provides an example of what music education is about, in the philosophy of work and the practice of a renowned Norwegian jazz music pedagogue. The jazz pedagogue concerned, John Pål Inderberg (hereafter referred to as JP), is an accomplished, internationally-recognised, ground-breaking jazz musician and jazz educator.

Among other things, he has been honoured for being a driving force in the establishment of the first formal jazz education program in Norway.

According to JP, ‘the aim of this jazz education is for the students to become themselves.’ This ‘becoming’ is realised through a dialogue between the inner and the outer in music and human beings – in which music is conceived as something that doesn’t necessarily involve sound.

In this chapter I present a narrative framed around one of JP’s ear-training lessons to illustrate the overarching existential focus of his philosophy and how he realises it in his teaching practice. The narrative is followed by a discussion of three key themes that emerged from my study of JP, expressed as a set of binary ‘pivots’: tradition/liberation, music as ‘hearable’/music as ‘un-hearable’, and pedagogue/performer. I reflect on these pivots in the light of Martin Heidegger’s thoughts about art and human beings and Christopher Smalls’ notion of ‘musicking’ (Heidegger 2000; Small 1998, 1987). In conclusion I explore how this chapter might enrich basic thinking in music and art teacher education.

1 Background

Since the 1960s, the Norwegian jazz scene has gained a reputation as one of the most vibrant and innovative in the international jazz community, led by pioneers such as Jan Garbarek, Karin Krog and Terje Rypdal. Their rise to success as a force in international jazz was supported by targeted efforts in the Norwegian jazz community at large. One of the strategies implemented was the formalisation of jazz education, beginning with establishment of the country’s first formal jazz progam (Jazzlinja in Norwegian) in 1979 at the conservatory of the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) in Trondheim.

At first, NTNU’s Jazzlinja was greeted with resistance and scepticism from the conservatory, which was strongly rooted in classical and church music, and even used to have signs hung on the school’s instruments that strictly prohibited their use to play pop or jazz music (Svedal 2004, website). The professional jazz community too raised doubts and objections about putting jazz education into the conservatory environment because they worried that this would destroy jazz completely.

Thus, the process of establishing the program was fraught with difficult negotiations and challenges. Yet, it also required JP to carefully reflect upon and articulate his own philosophy of jazz education – something that was a precious condition for my study.

As JP explains, the founders of Jazzlinja were musicians who ‘lived for their passion’, with ‘strong experiences of the importance of this’ – something that was hard to translate into a set of clearly-stated intentions and precise objectives for the curriculum of the program. ‘Jazz education is about encouraging the students to play something that has never been played before,’ JP elaborates, ‘otherwise, jazz education would become completely reactionary.’ (interview).

Although such intentions challenged the cherished traditions of the conservatory, they were ‘simply not negotiable,’ JP says. The current Jazzlinja website, JP and all the other teachers as well as the students of Jazzlinja affirm how glad they are that the program employs standards from the jazz community – outside the institution – as their norms.

Another feature that distinguishes Jazzlinja is its focus on ear training (No: Gehør, from German: Gehören). This is a main subject and is closely intertwined with the two other subjects comprising the basic curriculum, namely, jazz theory and one-to-one instrument teaching. Below, I will present a research narrative framed by one of JP’s ear-training lessons. First, though, I would like to offer a brief explanation of the research I undertook and the terms that I used both to frame the study and to make sense of my findings.

2 Research Design and Process

The basic question behind my study was: What philosophy of work can be seen in a jazz pedagogue’s teaching practice? The term ‘philosophy of work’ was developed in dialogue with Nordic professional theory, and Nordic Research in Music Education (Bouij 1998; Dale 2001; Englund 1996; Grimen 2008; Krüger 2000; Molander and Terum 2008; Nerland 2003; Schei 2007). From this vantage point, identity, knowledge and power are considered fundamental and inseparable aspects of an art educator’s philosophy of work, and thus, they combine to make one focus and are not studied separately.

The data for this article consisted of video observations and field notes of JP’s teaching practice in classroom ear-training and in one-to-one saxophone teaching. I also conducted an interview, and JP completed a mapping form about his background. Supplementary data came from official reviews of JP’s work and of the NTNU jazz program (Jazzlinja).

I analysed these data using a narrative thematic approach (Riessman 2008). Narrative approaches are considered beneficial for inquiring into complex practices such as art and teaching, and permit questions that could hardly be asked in stricter research traditions (Barrett and Stauffer 2009; Clandinin and Conelly 1996; Riessman 2008). They might be regarded as approaches that cut across strict academic disciplinary boundaries, and offer a way to work that is both ‘artful and art-full’ (Barrett and Stauffer 2009: 20). In the context of music- and art-education research, they provide a sustainable way to inquire into multiple understandings of music, art and education, and to identify ‘multiple stories, multiple voices, and multiple meanings of music and musicking’ (op.cit., p 19).

In narrative research, the borders between analysis and other parts of the research work are ‘soft’. Still, the analysis I made can be described as three-staged process, in which I (1) searched for verbally-articulated narratives and performed narratives in the data, (2) searched for themes, or ‘pivots’ that JP repeatedly emphasised, and (3) constructed a narrative to convey the insights as a story of JP’s practice.

Throughout this process I also sought theoretical/philosophical approaches that could facilitate my reflections on JP’s philosophy of work. I took Michel Foucault’s discourse-oriented thinking about power and knowledge as a point of departure, but found that this perspective did not provide me with either the language or the depth I needed for a discussion of JP’s philosophy of work that was legitimate, or resonated with JP’s thinking. An ‘ontological turn’ to Heidegger’s philosophy gave me frames of reference that seemed more appropriate (Foucault 1999; Heidegger 2000). Whilst considerable similarities between Foucault’s and Heidegger’s work can be identified, there are significant differences as well (Angelo and Varkøy 2011; Dreyfus 2004; Pio 2005).

The analysis was thematically focused around the topics that JP frequently reiterated both in his practice and in his reflections about his practice, and are therefore positioned as thematic narrative analysis (Riessman 2008: 53). I called the themes that emerged from my analysis pivots, both to underline the dynamic nature of the inquiry into his practice, and also to underscore them as aspects around which JP’s practice rotated – and which simultaneously ‘moved’ or motivated his work. The themes I identified were a source of frustration for me, as they seemed to be interdependent and contradictory at the same time. I had no tool to deal with that, and the solution became to see them as binary pivots, stretching into two opposite directions simultaneously.

For example, JP recurrently emphasised ‘tradition’, and the importance of respectful imitation of great musicians. At the same time he stressed the necessity to seek inwards for personal, brand-new expressions. Articulating the two themes as a binary pivot, − tradition/liberation –enabled me to see the outer and discursive as inextricably bundled to the inner and personal. According to French philosopher Jacques Derrida, such a binary opposition might be regarded to define its own logic; it opens a space for an approach to dilemmas that recognises diversity and sees oppositional perspectives and contradictions as fundamental for giving meaning (Derrida 1976; Dyndahl 2006). Thus, I conducted the study both within a narrative approach, and within a logic that recognises a ‘both/and’ perspective.

3 Into the Music

The following narrative is framed within one of JP’s ear-training lessons with six first-year Jazzlinja students, reconstructions based on video records along with other empirical materials. JP has read this chapter, and we have corrected any misunderstandings before publication.

JP puts on the music and opens the door; it is the second lesson in ear training for the first-year students of Jazzlinja. The students stroll in, chit-chat with each other and find their places in a semi-circle of chairs facing the blackboard. JP watches them. He doesn’t know these students yet, either what they hear or how they will express it. This is something he will learn, during the ear-training lessons throughout the year. As usual, the lesson starts with listening:

‘This is an interview with Tony Williams,’ JP says, ‘He started as a drummer in Miles Davis band already as a 16-year old; here he is commenting on a late recording of this band.’ The students and JP listen. ‘He’s reacting to Miles!’ Williams says, pointing out how the drummer responds to Miles Davis’s playing. ‘He ended it, you know,’ Williams says a little later, when the drummer finishes the musical conversation, adding: ‘That’s Miles, no one else could even think of that!’

JP explains Williams’ comments for the students: ‘You can hear how he is constantly inside the music,’ JP says, ‘how he moves in and out of the rhythmical, in and out of the melodic.’ When the interview ends JP explains how he sometimes brings this recording, ‘… to underline that this is the way we listen, here.’

Next, JP tells the students about his own ‘jazz education’, which consisted only of a theoretical course in improvisation with pianist George Russell when JP was 16. This course became a defining experience, JP explains, which encouraged him to develop methods to teach himself what Russell obviously heard, in his inner ear, about scales and systems. Russell not only understood these systems theoretically; he also heard them, in his inner ear. JP intuitively grasped this, and decided to teach himself how to do it. He bought jazz records and studied history-making musicians such as Stan Getz, John Coltrane and Lee Konitz.

‘To acquire other musicians’ styles through listening and imitation is time-consuming, but necessary work’ JP says, when he explains his learning to the students, and underlines how this work is never finished, but continues even when one is over 60 years old, like he is. He knows the amount of time and effort that these students will need to spend on such imitation work, but he also knows that he will continue to support them. It is essential to keep doing this, to develop deeper and deeper insights into great musicians’ ways of playing.

The first-year students listen attentively – now to saxophonist Jan Garbarek. JP plays a recording from the very earliest period of Garbareks’ career, where the phrases are typical of the masters he has studied.

‘That’s Dexter Gordon,’ JP comments, and ‘that’s a Coltrane phrase.’ He keeps pointing out the styles that Garbarek imitates, and comments when Garbarek lands wrong; ‘You can hear that he hears right, but that the horn won’t go along – he doesn’t land in his ear!’ JP says. Then he turns on a later recording with the same Garbarek, from another period, when he has developed a unique style, and turned into a musician who others imitate. This is the exact aim: to move on – from the imitation process, and with this as a basis – to create something new and personal. ‘The aim is not to become Bill Evans,’ JP says, ‘but, to avoid becoming Bill Evans, we must first become Bill Evans.’

The necessary imitation work implies intensity and precision, to the extent that one actually ‘becomes’ someone else for a while, and develops insights into how the other person ‘thinks music’. The next challenge is to free oneself from this. Many musicians remain stuck in the imitation process, and become nothing more than good copyists. This is both frustrating, and frowned upon. JP recalls an episode from the early 1980s, when he first met saxophone player Lee Konitz at a jazz stage in Voss, an experience which he analogises to ‘meeting history in the door’.

‘Suddenly he was there, three feet’s from me!’ JP tells the students. ‘This was quite a strange feeling. I had spent endless hours studying Konitz’ playing. Of course, Konitz noticed that, and surprisingly, reacted quite negatively.’ JP explains that Konitz was neither impolite nor rude, but responded rather ironically to JP’s playing, and made it clear that he didn’t like it. ‘He didn’t want me to be a copycat’ JP says, ‘He wanted me to play personally.’ And this is the issue – to draw some essence from what one imitates, and then use this essence to create something new.

‘How, then, do we do this?’ one student asks, ‘I’m stuck, and no matter what I do – I still sound like a bad copy of Coltrane!’ JP understands and gives the example of a former student who strived to free himself from the be-bop style. This student was frustrated and sick of himself and his playing, ready to give up. The solution he arrived at was to shift to a different aesthetic framework, and turn to Messiaen’s music to free up the learnt codes. JP explains how his own work with the music of Messiaen and Schönberg has been fruitful: ‘To change, and work with the same essence, inside a completely different framework, can contribute to freeing the existing codes from their original system,’ he says, ‘and provide an opportunity to use them in other ways.’

‘Do you remember the last ear-training class?’ JP asks the students, ‘When we listened to some Coltrane blues?’ One student begins to tap his foot. JP notices this and asks him what he hears. The student responds, a bit bewildered, ‘the bass.’ JP asks several questions about this bass, and encourages the student to communicate what it is he is hearing in his inner ear. The student unsteadily begins a bass line, and JP supports this from the side and keeps the beat with his foot. ‘Yeah, I hear that you hear right, but it doesn’t come out correctly. Nice search – keep going!’

Gradually several other students join in this imaginary bass line, and JP organises them so that everyone sings something alone. Once the bass line is established in the group, JP walks over to the piano and adds chords. A good atmosphere and great enthusiasm fills the room. Towards the end, both the students and JP participate in improvising over the bass line. ‘In improvisation,’ JP explains, ‘one aim is to hear what the others hears, and then to relate one's own playing to that.’ This requires JP, as a teacher to these students, to take part in their playing, to learn what they hear. Moreover, Jazzlinja teachers are musicians who actually play with their students on stages as well as in classrooms. In fact, this is made explicit as one of the prime intentions of the program. The basis to become good musicians is to imitate and to create something personal, and this work is done actively – by listening, by participating with body, voice and instrument, and by trying to express to others what oneself is hearing.

4 The Pivots: Identification and Discussion

The foregoing narrative illustrates a philosophy of work that simultaneously points outwards – towards a society and culture, and inwards – into the person/music. The inner/outer dichotomy could be reversed, in a context where the core/essence is considered to be inherent to a collective society, or in an epistemologically-oriented education where music is considered something that is objectively audible to anyone. In these cases, the individual and the individual’s inner ear would be considered a sediment of, or constructed by, these essences. Here, though, inwards is seen as inherent in the individual, while outwards concerns the collective. This resonates with how JP emphasises the individual’s own ear and personal expression.

In the pivots I identified in my study of JP, the outward perspective is represented by the first term in each word pair: tradition, music as ‘hearable’, and pedagogue. These terms may be easily linked to an epistemological or even discourse-oriented discussion of JP’s philosophy of work, because they underscore something collective, intentional and potentially measurable. In this view, diverse notions of music, teaching and learning certainly exist – all constructed and constituted by social and cultural contexts (Cook and Everist 2001). ‘Ear-training’ then, may differ significantly among diverse music traditions, in relation to specific instruments, styles, institutions, or musicians. JP’s way of teaching ear training, scale exercises or music theory would probably resonate quite differently, for example, in a classical music education context than in this jazz education context.

The inward perspective is underlined by the second term in every word pair; liberation, music as ‘un-hearable’ and performer. These may be associated with an ontological discussion about what it is to be a jazz pedagogue, what jazz is, and the intrinsic value of jazz education. All three indicate processes that go on inside humans and music, processes that are impossible to measure.

The imitation work, which is fundamental in JP’s practice, seems to be about getting to know both the outer structures in the music heard, and the person that one imitates. When JP explains how musicians, to avoid becoming Bill Evans, must first become Bill Evans, he underlines how person and music are perceived to be conjoined in jazz education.

From the point of view of Heidegger’s philosophy, the artist and the work of art are not categorically separate units, but intractably bundled (Heidegger 2000: 94). They are also regarded to have the same origin: ‘The essence of art, in which the artwork and the artist at once rest, is the setting-itself-to-work of truth.’ (Heidegger 2006: 55). The work setting of art presumes a work of art, which in Heidegger’s thinking doesn’t necessarily mean an art object, but dichtung, or poetry, in a wide sense, as the heart of both building, picture and tone (Heidegger 2000: 86 ff.). To bring truth into work in works of art requires a knowledge known as technè, which connotes both handcrafting and artistry, and thus, presumes an artist (Heidegger 2000; Varkøy 2012). Art, then, is both in the artwork, and in the person making the artwork. Similarly, in JP’s philosophy of work, what is to be learnt and revealed in jazz education exists both in the music, in the recognised musicians, and in the students. Therefore jazz musicians must direct their attention both inwards and outwards at the same time.

A key purpose of the jazz program, as JP puts it, is to ‘enable the students to become themselves.’ This process evolves through precise imitation work, where the aim is to copy great musicians’ expressions 100 %, and then acquire insights into how others have brought forth personal expressions from within themselves. The process of becoming then, does not happen unbiased, but under this specific jazz horizon.

According to New Zealand music philosopher, David Lines, who discusses music education in a Heideggerian framework, music pedagogues need deep insight into the specific music that they teach, including the contexts of this music and the communities where it has meaning, in order to be able to reveal truth and elicit ground-breaking expressions. Western music education is accused of over-focusing on strategies for mastery and control of the music, and that this overshadows how music education also must qualify working with music (Lines 2005).

The example of JP’s practice may provide a counterweight to right this imbalance, as a premise for bringing forth brand new expressions that rests on longstanding and profound experience with a jazz tradition. His perpetual hard work in learning this tradition and searching inwards, and his familiarity with the ways of working in a jazz community, constitute an unquestionable fundament for his perception of what jazz education is about.

4.1 Tradition and Liberation

The pivot tradition /liberation comprises both the content of the education, and the ways of working. The styles of influential musicians, such as Miles Davis, Jan Garbarek or Eric Dulphy are examples of what is considered content in JP’s teaching. Such history-making musicians’ expressions seem to be regarded as ‘mandatory’ in this jazz environment and as something into which students need to gain insight, in order to succeed. To succeed means both to possess qualifications to climb up the hierarchy of well-regarded musicians, and to gain insight into one’s own being, and then reveal immanent, personal potentials. Also, it is not only what is being played, but also how it is learned that is considered ‘tradition’ in JP’s practice. For example, there is an absence of music scores here. Music is to be learned through listening, imitating and recreating. This is regarded as fundamental to the main purpose of directing attention inwards to bring forth essences that might become groundbreaking expressions.

This work is also something that continues after one’s formal jazz education has ended. JP underscores how he still strives for this, as a 60-year-old, and how the jazz legend Lee Konitz, who is over 80, works this way too. The aim of learning something (or someone) 100 % is perhaps unachievable, but still the tradition is to constantly strive for this.

‘Some of the most important things I do are to convey humility for tradition, and to continuously search deeper into good musicians’ ways of playing,’ JP says about his work. Ultimately, the purposes are to free oneself from copying, and to create something no one has ever heard before. Procedures for such liberation are, for example, to move the codes between diverse music styles, or into ‘other aesthetic frameworks’ as JP puts it. This is exemplified in the anecdote about the student who worked with Messiaen’s music to break free from the be-bop style. JP’s story about Jan Garbarek’s progress from copycat novice into history-making expert also exemplifies the tradition/liberation pivot.

4.2 Music as ‘Hearable’ and Music as ‘Un-hearable’

This pivot too points inwards and outwards at once. Music as ‘hearable’ may be defined as a noun (a music, the music), and as something that can be described in terms developed within a Western musical understanding (Cook and Everist 2001). JP employs such terms in his teaching practice, for example in the narrative when he points out how Tony Williams ‘goes in and out of the rhythmic, the melodic and the harmonic.’ Williams does not employ these analytical terms, but focuses on interaction, collaboration and communication in his comments. JP also emphasises interaction, collaboration and communication in his work, for example when he underlines how musicians communicate what they hear, both in their inner and outer ears (field notes, interview). This focus, though, draws on a notion of music as something that does something – a verb rather than a noun.

In Heidegger’s writing’s, verbing is extensive: ‘Art west in the art-work’ (Heidegger 2006: 2, 2000: 9). The word ‘west’ is from ‘wesen’- meaning something like ‘the essence’, here. When the ‘wesen wests’ then, may be explained as ‘the essence’ ‘essences’. Heidegger employs west to underline how something manifests itself in the truth of its own way of being. A central point for Heidegger is that the works of art are not mere dead objects, they do something (Heidegger 2000: 85). JP told me early in our collaboration for this study that British music philosopher Christopher Small’s concept of musicking could provide a valid perspective on his practice. Small turns the western notion of music as a noun – connected to objects such as recordings and sounds, or possible sounds like in written music or MP3-files – into a verb: ‘to music’ and defines this verb as follows:

To music is to take part, in any capacity, in a musical performance. That means not only to perform, but also to listen, to provide material for a performance - what we call composing - to prepare for a performance - what we call practicing or rehearsing - or any other activity which can affect the nature of the human encounter. (Small 1998: 9)

In JP’s work, participation is most important, in listening, imitation and recreation. Everyone involved participates, first with voice and body, and finally with musical instruments. The same procedure is followed in one-to-one lessons with the saxophone student as in the ear-training lessons. Listening is carried out actively, and intense work is undertaken to search into the listener’s, and the performer’s ear. ‘You have to listen deeper into your ear,’ JP repeats, indicating that the ear has depth, and the search, deeper and deeper, seems to happen through singing, clapping and playing.

Listening inwards in music may be illuminated by Danish music philosopher Frede V. Nielsen’s thoughts about the object of music as a multi-faceted universe of meaning, corresponding to different layers of human consciousness (Nielsen 1994: 137). Nielsen considers the music object as multi-layered, where the different layers are realised in encounters with an experiencing and participating human being. When JP makes statements such as: ‘Great! I can hear that you hear, but that you don’t land in your ear. Nice search!’, this implies that he, as a third person, experience a communication between something heard, and an experiencing listener, and thus – a musical communication without sound. This suggests that the musical communication is not limited to one piece of music and one human being, but embraces and relates all those present in the same musical happening. This brings together Small’s perspective of musicking and Nielsen’s ideas about meaning-correspondence (Nielsen 1994; Small 1998), and underlines music as something both ‘hearable’, and ‘un-hearable’.

Frederik Pio (2005, 2007) discusses the emergence of the concept ‘musicality’, and argues that it can be seen as a physiological/psychological sensitivity. He employ the term ‘the audible’ for outer, physiological stimulation of senses, and the term ‘the heard‘ for inner, mental-psychic impressions, and argues that humans, in this perspective, are first and foremost seen as anatomical beings. Pio contrasts this with the consideration of musicality and musicality-bildung as a phenomenological sensitivity, whereby humans are mainly considered as lived beings (Pio 2007). In the latter perspective he employs the term music as something ‘over-heard’, understood as the subject's constitution of an aesthetic object, and music as something ‘un-heard’ – referring to the individual's immediate experience of Truth, in meaningful encounters between human beings and music.

My use of the terms music as ‘hearable’/music as ‘unhearable’ is inspired by Pio’s ideas, and seeks to point out how music is regarded both as an outer, noticeable phenomenon, and as an inner, phenomenological phenomenon in JP’s philosophy of work. The discussion about this pivot also underlines how these two views seem entwined and interdependent in JP’s perception of jazz education, bringing forth a view of music education that evades the subject/object division, and is not only about the sound of music.

In both Danish and Norwegian – unheard is an ambiguous word that also means something outrageous, inappropriate, upsetting or terrible, or even exceptional, powerful and overwhelming. Although Pio (2006) doesn’t reflect upon the ambiguity of this term, I think that exactly this equivocality and all the power that it embodies, make it suitable as a term to describe the revelation of existential Truths – which seems to be a core aspect of Pio’s term for music as something ‘unheard’ (Pio 2007). In this article, the term for music as ‘hearable’ is linked to the outer, physiological object music, while ‘un-hearable’ points toward potential encounters with truths.

In my experience JP’s philosophy of music education entangles all four of Pio’s terms (the audible, the heard, the over-heard and the un-heard) (Pio 2007). This because JP emphasises music both as an outer potential, which may be perceived in genuinely different ways, and at the same time as something relentless that reveals immediate and intrinsic Truths in encounters with experiencing and participating individuals. The latter can neither be explained, nor calculated or measured, whether in epistemological or physiological terms.

The pivot music as ‘hearable’/music as ‘un-hearable’ deals with JP’s musical ontology. Music as something ‘un-hearable’ is far from any object focus, which might seem fundamental in Nielsen’s thinking concerning music as something palpable, either as sound or as a potential sound stored in a medium (Nielsen 1994). Lines (2005) argues that music ontology is an important focus in music teacher education because it concerns the basis for what music education is about. Upcoming teachers need practice in articulating and discussing this to be able to work with the specific music in its contexts, and not only to control it. In JP’s philosophy, music is perceived as something that is both heard and and ‘un-heard’, and in his practice musicking is seen as the practicing of a tradition where the revelation of new expressions is the ultimate aim. This aim directs the practice to be realised as an existentialistic dialogue between inner and outer aspects of humans and music. In Small’s notion of musicking, the bringing forth of ideal relations is central (Small 1998). Relations, here, are seen both as phenomena that exist between persons, between music and humans; and as phenomena that exist inside oneself, between humans and the supernatural, or that one only wishes existed:

Musicking is an activity by means of which we bring into existence a set of relationships that model the relationships of our world, not as they are but as we would wish them to be, and if through musicking we learn about and explore those relationships, we affirm them to ourselves and anyone else who may be paying attention, and we celebrate them, then musicking is in fact a way of knowing our world – not that pre-given physical world, divorced from human experience, that modern science claims to know but the experiential world of relationships in all its complexity (Small 1998: 50)

Small stresses human yearning for diverse kinds of relationship, and argues that musicking brings forth such relationships. This coincides with how Heidegger emphasises that humans long for insight into their own being (Heidegger 2000; Small 1998). JP’s practice seem to embody a search for such relationships, both inside oneself, with the sound-less hearing of others, and with the music. In the context of music teacher education, JP’s philosophy of work provides an example of music education that in fundamental ways resists a typical foci in western music education, namely the sole aim to build skills to master an outer, audible object.

4.3 Pedagogue/Performer

The last pivot is pedagogue/performer. JP says that ‘to be a jazz pedagogue, or to be a jazz performer, there’s really no difference. It’s two sides of the same coin.’ At the NTNU jazz program, the teachers often play with their students, for example, as members of the same bands – before, during and after the students’ education. On the Jazzlinja’s website the jazz teachers’ own experiences from the field of jazz are regarded as the primary references for the pedagogical thinking of the program. JP repeatedly points out: ‘I don’t act as a teacher. This is my life!’ This says something about the intensity of his work, but most of all, it is to be taken literally: It is his life – being a jazz musician/ jazz pedagogue – which is realised in his educational practice. He teaches his students what he taught himself, and the ways that he taught it to himself. This personal approach to education harmonizes with the intentions underlined on the Jazzlinja website, and also coincides with other practices in art education (Angelo 2014; Østern et al. 2013). Such philosophies of work seem both important and challenging to discuss, from ethical as well as methodological standpoints, in art-teacher education. Who is qualified to decide for whose life what is good enough to be the fundamental content in formal education? How should ways of working in such education be improved? And, how should quality be considered?

In the Jazzlinja context, the value and the knowledge of both jazz and jazz education are seen to exist in the field. ‘Real jazz’ happens outside, and may bear ways to view knowledge and education that are oppositional to the epistemological focus that prevails in western education. Still, jazz education might benefit from being institutionalized within accomplished institutions, to enable the students to receive accreditation and certification. On the one hand, such ‘stamps’ of societal recognition can provide jazz education with power that can benefit the jazz world. On the other hand, the institutionalization of jazz can also threaten the oppositional power of the values and knowledge that come from jazz’s extra-institutional position.

JP is glad that almost all jazz students choose a pedagogic direction for their jazz education. ‘They need this to qualify their reflections upon their work,’ he says, and underscores that further improvements of the jazz education curriculum will require the musicians to be able to articulate and critically discuss their practices. This might raise concerns that public regulations and mainstream views will come to form this art education practice, which now relies on traditions that only border the traditions of formal education. JP stresses that music pedagogy needs to be context-oriented, aimed towards the particular musical lives, be it jazz, church music, or classical music, that the education qualifies students to live. ‘Being a church musician, a classical musician or a jazz musician are three very different things, and teacher education toward these lives needs to reflect that,’ he says, again stressing that it is the specific life and the specific ways of being in each form of musicianship that must be the point of departure.

In music teacher education, diverse cultures of knowledge can be identified that are dissonant with each other, and point to a need for opposite content (Johansen 2006). In JP’s philosophy of work, the dissonance is not only about knowledge; it is also about different ways of being. Being a jazz pedagogue seems to be not only about epistemological knowledge, but also about ways to be in the world, and about how being a jazz musician can be something fundamentally different than being a classical pianist.

5 JP’s Philosophy of Work: Contributions to Basic Thinking in Music Teacher Education

In conclusion I would like to highlight three aspects of this discussion of JP’s philosophy of work that may enrich basic thinking in music teacher education.

First: it is two different things to facilitate music education if ‘music’ is considered an object that the teacher brings to the lessons in a suitcase, or if ‘music’ and ‘humans’ are regarded as two aspects of the same thing. Given JP’s practice: Is it Jan Garbarek that we hear, or is it Jan Garbarek’s playing? If it is the human we hear, the next question is, whether we can talk about music education, or if it would be more correct to regard it as a form of human education? Where we consider the subject music to be – inside or outside of human beings – has a great bearing on our basic thinking about music education.

This also touches on the problematic division between professional and personal issues in the discourse of music teacher education. Discussions about music education sometimes highlight a distinction between content and activity, or between whether music education aims to educate students in or through music (Bamford 2006; Hanken and Johansen 1998; Nielsen 1994; Ruud 1983; Varkøy 2003). Such questioning lacks relevance in JP’s philosophy, in which, as discussed above, the existential dialogue between the outer and the inner isn’t biased on a differentiation of subject and object (musician and music). A focus such as listening deeper into one’s own ear must be considered as both the content, and the activity; it lacks the object that provides the premise for this distinction. Instead of the misleading question of ‘in or through’, JP’s philosophy of work enables other questions that might be even more interesting to discuss in music teacher education. For example, questions about the ontologies of music, and what practices diverse ontologies might enable or hinder.

Second: the education that JP’s philosophy of work underscores centres on the individual. The ‘becoming’ of the self is to happen through listening ‘into the ear’ to reveal immanent, personal expressions. The individual focus in western art and artistry on soloists, composers, and so on, might be considered antithetical to art, for example, in Asian cultures where greater focus is placed on the collective (Couteau 2011). Whilst a music educator in a Balinese gamelanFootnote 1 might centre on the collective in music performance as fundamental to reveal Truths, and to relate to the Divine, JP’s philosophy of work rather takes the individuals involved as a starting point in his teaching practice, which is not merely about qualifying jazz musicians, but also about qualifying persons for their lives (Angelo 2013a, b).

The ‘becoming’ in JP’s philosophy relates to one specific jazz context. It is ‘framed’ by a specific time and place. Heidegger uses the term Gestell to address how such frameworks are essential to what can be brought forth and how (Heidegger 2000: 75–76; Pio 2012: 220–222). What comes forth relates in fundamental ways to the specific backgrounds of the artwork and the artist. Small underlines the same thing, when he writes about how musicking cannot bring forth any identities or relations, but depends on the person’s familiarity with the specific context (Small 1987). The power that forces the becoming, then, can be seen both as inside the individuals, and also embedded in the context. Power, and being, are omnipresent, and come both from the inner and the outer – anyway one turns it. To ‘listen into the ear,’ as JP puts it, then, might be about tuning the senses towards sensitivity beyond the auditory, towards what looms within the tradition – without necessarily sounding. When individuals become aware of this, it may provide an opportunity to break through the barriers that entrench each person's becoming. To ‘tune’ the ear towards ‘hear-abilities’ without sound might also allow relations far beyond those that can be verbally expressed using pronouns (Small 1998). Such experiences are not necessarily pleasant or enjoyable, since art may be as brutal as life itself. Exactly this fact seems fundamental to real becoming in jazz education, from the point of view of JP’s philosophy of work.

Third: to consider the activity of an art performer and an art pedagogue as inseparable is a perspective that challenges the fundamental assumptions underlying music teacher education. If being a performer and being a pedagogue are two sides of the same coin – what then should music teacher education be about? The subject ‘pedagogy’ is a fundamental part of any teacher education in Nordic contexts, and is a subject that concerns individuals, society and humanity, as well as strategies for teaching and learning.

In JP’s philosophy, such foci are also fundamental in jazz education, where the subject and the pedagogy are entwined and conjoined in the same way as music and musicking in Small’s thinking. In Heidegger’s thinking, art has a unique relationship to truth, a relationship that is never spelt out, but can be revealed through presence and careful attention to the ‘tone in the tone, the colour in the colour, or the shape in the shape’ in artworks (Heidegger 2000: 11). By not splitting insights into what is art and what is pedagogy, music and art education might strengthen their focus on presence and attention. If the intentions are presence and attention, as in JP’s philosophy of jazz education, then art and pedagogy are two things of the same kind – both serving to direct attention both inwards and outwards, both into music and into human beings. This philosophy calls for a focus in music teacher education on one's own existential experiences with music, and in a substantial way, on the intrinsic values of music/musicking.

Throughout this article, I have highlighted the tensions and opposite ways of thinking that have enabled my study and discussion about JP’s philosophy of music education. The three binary pivots I have discussed suggest that the inner and essential in music education is inextricably linked to the external and discursive. Subject cannot be separated from object in this context, even though these concepts in analytical contexts derive their content by contrasting one another. Tradition/liberation, music as ‘hearable’/music as ‘un-hearable’ and pedagogue/performer are as indivisible as the word pair music/music education, and precisely this might be the simplest, yet most important contribution that this article can offer to music teacher education.

It does not seem legitimate to define teacher education that aims to qualify teachers for practices comparable to JP’s as either ‘epistemological’ or ‘ontological’. It would be better to regard it as an approach to education that underscores an inquisitive kind of knowing, which intersects academic boundaries between subject/object, epistemology/ontology, identity/knowledge. JP's philosophy of work and practice provides one example to spur a discussion of basic thinking in teacher education, about what music education really concerns. The professional music educator, then, can reconcile the outer and the inner in the form of a dialogue in which subject and object are linked together, in an approach to music education that enables free, autonomous, and musicking individuals to live and develop.