PhD

The Creation of Meaning and Identity in the Dublin Jazz Scene, Past and Present

My thesis is an ethnographic and archival study of jazz in Dublin: how musicians, audiences and organisers make sense of the music, where it came from in Ireland, and who gets to say what it is. I completed it in 2016 at the Conservatory of Music and Drama, then part of Dublin Institute of Technology and now TU Dublin, with a Fiosraigh Scholarship.

Download the thesis from TU Dublin’s Arrow repository (free, PDF).

If you read it, I’d be glad to hear what you think: damian@damianevans.net.

The PhD recital, 2012

The research started out with a practice-based strand on creativity and interaction in jazz trios, informed by my own trio’s work. The first recital for it took place on 20 March 2012 at the DIT Conservatory of Music and Drama, Chatham Row.

To an audience it was much like any other gig, though I did print a programme, which is usual for classical recitals and rare in jazz. It still felt strange to see “PhD Recital” at the top of the poster. What was different was how we chose the programme and how we reflected on the performance afterwards. Jazz has been at home on the concert stage for a long time, but there’s still a sense that its natural home is the club or the pub, and putting it in a conservatory recital changes what both audience and band expect. It also shaped the repertoire: compositions by Uri Caine, Vijay Iyer and Avishai Cohen, and our own arrangements of standards and traditional material, drawing on trio players from Ahmad Jamal, Oscar Peterson and Bill Evans to Brad Mehldau and Iyer.