Indices of Style in Free Jazz: Towards an Intersubjective Performance Framework

This research examines the development of intersubjectivity between improvising musicians. Drawing on Peirce’s (1935) semiotic theory of indexicality and Mead’s (1939) social behaviourist theory of emergence, this practice-based project engages a series of improvisation exercises that explore how an understanding of musical style informs the processes underlying the performance of spontaneously improvised music. A selection of recorded works are analysed subjectively through ethnographic accounts, providing a first-person insight into the processes of free improvised music as dynamically intersubjective.