Recontextualizing the referent

This article investigates the musical text within an original-music project, aligning manifold perspectives on this with a practice-led research endeavour. Some form of text is central to musical engagements involving jazz musicians, in the form of lead sheets, arrangements of existing repertoire, original compositions and, more abstractly, subjective understandings of canon common to the community. Central to this article is the extent to which text influences the synergy of a musical situation and how different musicians within an ensemble interpret the same material. By coupling historical and synchronic perceptions of the musical text with my own practice, I offer insights on how improvising musicians negotiate the potential autonomy of a composition whilst offering their own perspectives. During collaboration, musicians create a context-specific approach to music-making, accommodating social and intra-musical influences. This article aligns existing narratives on authorship and materiality with jazz practice, suggesting overlaps with textility, and notated scores such as scripts, heteroglossia and boundary objects.