Blurred Distinctions: What My Doctoral Research Taught Me About Jazz, Concert Music, and Hybrid Musical Languages
- Rafael Piccolotto de Lima
- Jul 13
- 15 min read
Updated: Jul 25
What happens when music does not fit comfortably into a category?
The question seems simple, but it becomes surprisingly difficult when we take a closer look at music history. Many of the categories we use to organize repertoires, styles, and traditions appear clear at first. Popular music. Concert music. Jazz. Rock. Choro. Samba. Each of these terms suggests the existence of relatively well-defined boundaries. In practice, however, those boundaries rarely remain so stable.
This observation served as the starting point for my doctoral research, titled Blurred Distinctions. The initial goal was to investigate the relationship between jazz and concert music through an analysis of works by Maria Schneider, Vince Mendoza, and John Psathas. Over the course of the research, however, the discussion expanded into a broader question: to what extent do the musical categories we use to describe music correspond to the way it is actually created?
The full title of the dissertation is Blurred Distinctions; Beyond Third Stream – A Study in Composition of Confluent Hybrid Musical Styles: The Amalgam of Jazz and Classical Concert Music.
Categories remain extremely useful. They help organize knowledge, guide teaching, facilitate communication, and allow musicians, scholars, and listeners to find common points of reference. The problem arises when we fail to recognize their limits and begin to treat them as complete descriptions of musical reality.
One of the conclusions that emerged from the research was that many of the boundaries we use to classify music seem to concern musicologists, academics, and industry professionals far more than the creators themselves. When we observe composers, arrangers, and improvisers at work, it becomes clear that creative processes often move among distinct references, techniques, and traditions in ways that rarely fit within a single definition.
This tension between categories and musical practice is not new. Throughout history, different societies have created systems to organize repertoires, social functions, and musical traditions. These systems, like the styles and genres they seek to describe, have always been in a state of transformation.
The False Idea of Musical Purity
When we look at music history, one idea appears repeatedly: the attempt to define “pure” musical forms, isolated and clearly separated from one another. This effort tends to encounter difficulties almost immediately.
The very distinction between popular music and concert music becomes unstable when we consider how repertoires circulate among different contexts over time. The same happens when we try to define musical styles through a fixed set of characteristics. Exceptions, transitional zones, and works that challenge the limits of existing classifications almost always emerge.
The case of jazz is particularly interesting. Many discussions about jazz begin with an attempt to identify its essence: improvisation, swing, harmonic language, instrumentation, or some combination of these elements. The problem is that virtually every definition encounters examples that contradict it. There is music widely recognized as jazz that does not use swing. There are works that incorporate improvisation without being considered jazz. Even within the tradition itself, instrumental configurations vary tremendously.
More importantly, jazz has never been an isolated language. Formed within the African American context, it emerged through the interaction of African and European musical traditions. Throughout the twentieth century, it continued to incorporate new materials, new practices, and new references.
For this reason, one of the central observations of the research was that any discussion of the purity of jazz must take into account that jazz itself originated as a hybrid language.
This realization can be extended beyond jazz. When we look at music history more broadly, we see that many of the styles we now treat as established categories arose precisely through processes of convergence, transformation, and mutual influence.
The Problem of Naming the Spaces Between Categories
Throughout the twentieth century, numerous musicians and scholars tried to find ways to describe works that seemed to exist between different traditions.
One of the best-known attempts emerged in 1957, when composer, conductor, and scholar Gunther Schuller introduced the concept of Third Stream.
The idea was relatively simple. Schuller observed that certain works belonged neither entirely to the world of jazz nor entirely to that of concert music. They emerged precisely at the intersection of these traditions. According to his definition, Third Stream would be the result of the convergence of two major musical streams: jazz and Western concert music.
The idea quickly gained prominence and, at the same time, began to generate controversy.
Some critics saw these attempts as a dilution of both traditions. For some musicians associated with jazz, the incorporation of concert music techniques weakened central characteristics of the jazz language. For some musicians associated with concert music, the use of improvisation and popular elements seemed incompatible with certain historical ideals of the classical tradition.
Curiously, many of these criticisms were based on the assumption that relatively pure and stable forms of these languages existed.
Many of the composers involved in these processes, however, seemed to view the situation differently. Schuller himself insisted that the goal was not to replace jazz or concert music, nor to create a new category capable of absorbing all others. The interest lay in the creative possibilities that emerged when different traditions began to interact on equal terms.
Over time, the term Third Stream itself became insufficient.
Many of the works produced in the following decades no longer involved only jazz and concert music. Composers began to incorporate references from folk traditions, urban popular music, regional repertoires, improvisational practices unrelated to jazz, and musical traditions from different parts of the world.
The number of combinations grew more quickly than labels could describe them, creating a landscape that could no longer be adequately encompassed by the term Third Stream.
The Emergence of a New Kind of Musician
One of the most interesting findings of the research was that this transformation was taking place not only in the works but also in the musicians themselves.
For much of the twentieth century, jazz and concert music were taught in relatively separate environments. Musicians generally specialized in a particular tradition, developing distinct repertoires, techniques, and ways of thinking.
In recent decades, this landscape has begun to change. The growth of university jazz programs, the expansion of higher education in music, and the increasing circulation of information have given rise to a generation of musicians with much broader backgrounds.
Today, it is relatively common to find composers, arrangers, and performers who move naturally among different musical worlds, improvise, write complex scores, work in popular music settings, collaborate with orchestras, produce recordings, and engage with references drawn from different traditions.
In the literature consulted for this research, several authors associate the growth of hybrid languages with aesthetic changes and transformations in musicians’ training. When musicians study, listen to, and practice different traditions throughout their development, it becomes increasingly natural for these references to appear simultaneously in their work.
Gunther Schuller described this process through a hypothetical example that caught my attention during the research. He imagined a composer who grew up surrounded by a particular cultural tradition and later studied jazz, improvisation, and contemporary concert music, deeply absorbing all of these experiences. For Schuller, it would be virtually inevitable for this musician to develop a personal language built from the convergence of these influences.
The most interesting aspect of this example is that it does not describe a musical genre. It describes a person.
The central question shifts from “what category does this music belong to?” to “how does this artist organize and transform the references that are part of their experience?” This change in perspective became increasingly important over the course of the research. From that point on, the investigation began to examine how each creator constructs a personal relationship with the traditions they have inherited.
In addition to my conversations with the three composers whose works were analyzed, interviews with Gary Lindsay, Terence Blanchard, and André Mehmari broadened the discussion of improvisation, orchestral writing, and musical training. Their perspectives helped connect the issues observed in the scores with the practical experience of composers, arrangers, and performers.
Three Composers, Three Different Paths
An important part of the research consisted of analyzing works by three contemporary composers: Maria Schneider, Vince Mendoza, and John Psathas.
The selection brought together three distinct trajectories within this territory where musical languages converge. Each composer begins with their own set of references and arrives at very different solutions for integrating improvisation, orchestral writing, form, and artistic identity.
Maria Schneider: Choro Transformed Through a Personal Language
Maria Schneider built her career primarily within the big band tradition, also known as the jazz orchestra. Her work is deeply connected to the lineage of composers such as Gil Evans and Bob Brookmeyer while incorporating influences that extend beyond the historical boundaries of this ensemble.
In Choro Dançado, the piece analyzed in the research, Schneider draws on the world of Brazilian choro to create a work that does not seek to reproduce the tradition literally. The continuous, syncopated rhythm, the use of the pandeiro, and the accentuation in the second half of the measure reference choro, while the harmony and big band writing reflect other dimensions of her language.
Schneider acknowledges that the piece also incorporates Spanish and Argentine influences, along with the strong presence of Egberto Gismonti’s music. Even the title situates the composition within her personal world: traditional choro is not dance music, whereas physical movement occupies an important place in the way she conceives music.
Her experience in Brazil also had a conceptual impact on her work. During the interview, Schneider described how her contact with choro and Brazilian culture gave her the freedom to write music associated with joy and beauty. This transformation appears in Choro Dançado as part of a broader artistic relationship, one capable of absorbing a tradition and responding to it in a personal voice.
While speaking with her during the research, another observation caught my attention. Schneider said that she had never thought of her music in terms of rigid categories. She grew up studying Bach, Mozart, and Beethoven while also being introduced to jazz and American popular song. These references never seemed incompatible to her.
Her priority, she explained, is to establish a connection with the audience. The singularity of her work emerged from the convergence of the many references that shaped her listening and from the coherent way in which she transformed them into a recognizable language.
Vince Mendoza: Improvisation Within Orchestral Form
Vince Mendoza represents a different trajectory.
His work as a composer, arranger, and musical director has brought him into contact with an extraordinarily diverse range of artists, orchestras, and musical traditions. Throughout his career, he has written arrangements for figures associated with popular song, rock, and pop music, including Joni Mitchell, Björk, and Sting. In jazz, he has collaborated with musicians such as Michael Brecker, John Scofield, and Herbie Hancock. His work has also extended to Brazilian artists, including Ivan Lins and Luciana Souza, and to ensembles such as the London Symphony Orchestra, the Berlin Philharmonic, the Metropole Orkest, and the WDR Big Band.
The work analyzed in the research, Poem of the Moon, reveals an approach to writing that combines jazz improvisation with resources associated with the orchestral tradition. For approximately half of the piece, a soloist improvises, giving the performer a decisive role in the development of the composition.
Mendoza conceives of the improvised section as a continuation of the form. The orchestral backgrounds revisit thematic materials, guide the development of the solos, and contribute to the construction of climaxes. At certain moments, the score itself provides the improviser with more detailed melodic and harmonic indications, establishing a direction without fully determining the musical outcome.
This approach also appears in the way Mendoza describes his work. For him, a jazz composer writes from the instrumentalist’s perspective and must imagine what the musician might create. The boundary between written and improvised material becomes less perceptible because both participate in the same developmental process.
What struck me most about Mendoza was his ability to think of the orchestra as a palette of colors available for creating new music. His work explores the possibilities that arise when orchestral resources, jazz improvisation, and references from different traditions coexist within the same project.
John Psathas: A Work Built for the Improviser
John Psathas brought yet another perspective to the research. Schneider and Mendoza developed significant parts of their careers in worlds closely connected to jazz, while Psathas’s background is rooted primarily in contemporary concert music. His work also incorporates elements of Greek musical tradition, improvisation, and different rhythmic languages.
During the interview, Psathas made a particularly revealing comment. According to him, “jazz” and “classical music” have become “omnigenres,” broad categories that encompass many different genres. For Psathas, these terms have become too broad to communicate anything specific about a musician’s work. His observation spoke directly to one of the central questions of the research: when a category comes to include so many different possibilities, to what extent can it still explain anything?
The work analyzed in the research was Omnifenix, written for tenor saxophone, drums, and orchestra. Originally conceived for Michael Brecker, the composition uses improvisation as a central part of its structure and adapts the space given to the soloist to the characteristics of the performer himself.
To write the saxophone part, Psathas studied recordings and transcriptions of Brecker, seeking to identify the elements that made his approach to improvisation so distinctive. The goal was to build a structured musical environment in which the soloist could improvise freely while remaining deeply connected to the identity of the work. After the first rehearsal, Brecker compared the experience to wearing a custom-made glove.
Improvisation is present throughout almost the entire duration of Omnifenix and requires the performer to have a detailed understanding of the form. The soloist must anticipate changes in direction, shape the energy, and relate their choices to the events unfolding in the orchestra. The score combines written passages, harmonic indications, scale suggestions, and open instructions regarding character and intensity.
Omnifenix demonstrated with particular clarity that the improviser participates in the very conception of the work. The composition was built to embrace the identity of a specific musician, making the relationship between composer and performer an essential part of its language.
The analysis of the three works ultimately led to a conclusion I had not expected to find so clearly. Although the three composers work in similar territories, their works do not produce similar results. Their compositional solutions, influences, aesthetic priorities, and ways of organizing improvisation, orchestration, formal development, and thematic material are different.
Their attitude toward traditions is the common thread. All three composers treat them as resources available for creation, freely reorganizing materials and procedures within languages of their own. This was one of the most important observations to emerge from the research. The artists who most interested me were focused on building their own musical worlds, regardless of the category that might be used to describe them.
Seven Masks: Composition as Part of the Research
The research also resulted in the creation of Seven Masks, a seven-movement suite conceived to explore in practice some of the processes discussed in the dissertation. The work was rehearsed and recorded with musicians from the Henry Mancini Institute and students from the Frost School of Music. This process made it possible to observe, beyond the theoretical realm, how orchestral writing and improvisation interacted with performers from different backgrounds.
The programmatic inspiration came from the archetypes described by Christopher Vogler in The Writer’s Journey. Each movement corresponds to a recurring figure in storytelling: Herald, Mentor, Trickster, Shape-Shifter, Threshold Guardian, Shadow, and Hero. The dissertation focuses on three of them, Mentor, Trickster, and Threshold Guardians, using each archetype as a point of departure for exploring a different combination of materials and procedures.
In Mentor, the tenor saxophone traces a path that brings together references to Impressionism and cool jazz. The orchestration explores the idiomatic characteristics of the instruments, and improvisation appears in the development section. This writing required less rehearsal time because it engaged directly with practices the musicians had already mastered.
Trickster was conceived to challenge conventions. Represented by a trombone duo, the movement uses twelve-tone rows, elements of swing, and unusual orchestration techniques. Some passages distribute the construction of pulse and groove among different sections of the orchestra, producing interesting sonic results as well as practical challenges in performance.
Threshold Guardians brings together alto saxophone, distorted guitar, and the power of the full ensemble. Its language combines procedures associated with twentieth-century modernist music, dissonant harmonies, and African-derived grooves to represent the archetype’s aggressiveness. The improvised parts must respond to the form, changes in density, and the trajectory of energy constructed by the orchestra.
The rehearsal process revealed that the effectiveness of a hybrid language depends as much on the materials selected as on the people responsible for bringing them to life. Idiomatically written passages achieved satisfactory results more quickly. Sections that asked musicians to approach pulse, articulation, and feel in less familiar ways required more time before the musical intention became clear.
With Seven Masks, composition became a stage of the investigation itself. The experience confirmed the importance of writing with the performers’ skills, references, and creative capacities in mind. The integration of traditions takes place in the score, in rehearsal, and in the decisions musicians make during performance.
When Labels No Longer Explain the Music
I began this research with the recognition that jazz and concert music are distinct traditions and that musical categories continue to exist. These traditions have their own histories, repertoires, practices, forms of teaching, and aesthetic values. Much of music’s richness depends precisely on this diversity.
The investigation sought to understand what happens when these traditions coexist within the same work and when creative processes cross the divisions we use to describe music. The differences among the three trajectories analyzed made the scope of the question clearer: each artist reshapes these legacies in a personal way.
This perception also emerged from the literature review and the interviews conducted during the research. Distinctions among styles often become more rigid within the systems through which music is classified, taught, and circulated than they are in the work of creators themselves. Jazz, concert music, and other traditions remain recognizable, while creative processes move among them with greater freedom.
Both jazz and concert music developed historically by absorbing and transforming new influences. Neither tradition emerged fully formed, remained static, or was built in isolation. Both incorporated repertoires, technologies, performance practices, and cultural references from different places. When we examine these processes more closely, the idea of a completely pure musical tradition becomes difficult to sustain.
The research began to focus on the way each artist transforms the influences they receive.
Among the musicians interviewed during the research, André Mehmari expressed this perception with particular elegance. Reflecting on Third Stream and the relationship between jazz and concert music, he proposed the existence of countless streams, each associated with the idiosyncrasies of an individual creator:
“Every great musical mind is a stream.”
The statement stayed with me because it shifts the center of the discussion. Rather than looking for a category capable of explaining great artists, we turn our attention to how these artists construct their own musical worlds.
Figures such as Duke Ellington, Hermeto Pascoal, Egberto Gismonti, Gil Evans, and Maria Schneider can be associated with specific genres, movements, and traditions. These connections are real and important. Even so, labels explain their work only up to a point. At some stage, artistic identity comes to be defined less by genre and more by the singular way in which each creator organizes materials, references, and experiences.
In the final chapter of the dissertation, I used an image inspired by André Mehmari’s reflections to describe this process. The artist functions like a crystal: human experience reaches them in the form of light composed of influences, traditions, memories, and lived experience. Each artist refracts that light differently, revealing a particular combination of colors and possibilities that could not have existed in exactly the same form before the light passed through them.
The most remarkable works transform the influences they receive into something with an identity of its own. Traditions and their differences remain present, reorganized through the singular relationship each creator establishes with them.
The title Blurred Distinctions emerged from this observation. It recognizes that many of the most interesting creative processes take place in regions where contours cease to be perfectly clear, without erasing the differences among traditions.
The research revealed that musical creation often takes place with far greater freedom than the categories used to describe it.
Many years after beginning this investigation, I continue to encounter the same questions in the projects, composers, and repertoires that spark my curiosity. The dissertation was an attempt to study them systematically. The conversation remains open.
About the Author
Rafael Piccolotto de Lima is a composer, arranger, music director, and educator. A Latin Grammy-nominated composer and recipient of multiple international awards, including 13 DownBeat Awards and honors from ASCAP, he develops artistic projects that connect Brazilian music, jazz, orchestral writing, improvisation, recording production, research, education, and interdisciplinary collaboration.
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