‘From Body to Body, on the Hither Side of Words or Concepts’

Transferability in, and following, an Artistic Experiment in Practice-as-Research

Abstract

This article is concerned with the question of transferability, in terms of the dissemination of the outcomes of practice-as-research in the wider music-research community, and also with regard to the project-to-project trajectories of such research undertakings. Specifically, it is focused on my recent doctoral enquiry in jazz, investigating the emergence and elaboration of a method of experimenting with the performance practice of the standard repertoire. Drawing on the work of Merleau-Ponty (2002), Bourdieu (1977), and Knorr Cetina (2001), I argue that there is an ineffability inherent in all art practice that is resistant to discursivisation. I demonstrate aspects of my development of a means of encouraging my fellow musicians to enter into the experiment (rather than being, simply, interpreters of a fixed method of practising jazz standards). I argue that such encouragement took place on the level of an expert sensing of the potential future trajectories of the developing method, with implications for our understandings of expert music-making and music research in terms of knowledge practices. To conclude, I speculate as to the usefulness of the mode of conveyance (and elaboration) of the performance-practice method as a means of research dissemination in the music research context, more generally.