From my music to our music

This article explores the transformative journey from my music as a composer to our music as a group within the context of a jazz recording project. By choosing a practice-based design and a participant observer strategy, I have focused on the reality created with the band, recognizing that a jazz recording process is intersubjective, contextual, and subjective. Cognitive insight is combined with phenomenological accounts of subjective experience to understand the collaborative process better. It reveals strategies, negotiations, and ways of keeping the music alive. Semi-structured focus group interviews were conducted in rehearsals and recording sessions to capture how the conversations changed as the project progressed. The findings of this research underscore the central role of trust and empathy in balancing individual expression with group cohesion. It gradually shifted towards more embodied intuitive approaches as the project progressed towards recording. Individual initiatives were more often carried out collectively as the process progressed due to more familiarity with each other’s preferences in playing. The importance of the practice-based research project is emphasized by material obtained in both playing and interviews, as the interviews supported the ongoing artistic work through the reflections they stirred.