TECHNOLOGICAL DEVELOPMENT AND APPLICATION OF JAZZ MUSIC IN EUROPE (1975–2025)
Keywords:
jazz in Europe, digitalization, improvisation, algorithmic music, live electronicsAbstract
The report outlines a broad analytical framework for understanding the technological development and application of jazz music in Europe over the five decades between 1975 and 2025. It traces how changes in studio environments, digital production tools and performance interfaces have progressively redefined the aesthetic, organisational and infrastructural conditions of jazz practice. The study examines the transition from analog recording to digital workstations, the consolidation of MIDI and later MPE-based expressive control, the integration of live electronics and software-driven improvisation, as well as the emergence of spatial audio and immersive formats that reposition timbre, spatiality and dynamic articulation as structural parameters. The analysis highlights region-specific trajectories across Scandinavia, the UK, Central Europe, France–Benelux and Eastern Europe, where different technological resources, institutional models and cultural ecologies generate distinct aesthetic profiles. Parallel to these artistic developments, the report reviews the academic consolidation of jazz education in European conservatories, the expansion of practice-based research, and the integration of modules in production, live electronics and Music Information Retrieval (MIR), which increasingly align training with contemporary professional practices. The text argues that technological acceleration does not simply augment existing jazz idioms but reshapes the grammar of authorship, mediation and circulation. The concluding perspective identifies directions for further development, including immersive listening environments, collaborative systems between musicians and algorithms, and multimodal performance ecologies that define the present technological horizon of European jazz
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