Contemporary music improvisation for silent film: Challenging and evoking the jazz canon

This article explores how contemporary music improvisation for silent film both evokes and challenges the jazz canon by pushing the boundaries of genre, instrumentation, techniques, and collaboration while also engaging with the narrative and cultural contexts of the films. It draws from my practice-led research over the last twenty years, which has consisted of performing free improvised music in response to the screening of silent film, as a solo performer or as part of a jazz ensemble. The corpus of films used in the research spans animated shorts by Dutch director Gerrit van Dijk, surrealist shorts by Man Ray, German expressionist feature film by Fritz Lang and F. W. Murnau, French feminist film by Germaine Dulac, and documentary and amateur archive film of the North West Film Archive in Manchester and the Media Archive for Central England in Lincoln. In the performances, while jazz is taken as primary influence, musicians often incorporate elements of other musics, make use of a broader range of instruments and of non-traditional sound sources beyond the typical jazz ensemble, and employ experimental techniques and unconventional playing methods that challenge and evoke the conventional improvisational norms of jazz. Musicians might opt to follow or contradict the narrative and emotional cues of the film, which can result in processes of music making that prioritize the exploration of the boundaries of storytelling over traditional jazz forms and structures. Across this research, I have observed how silent film improvisation has been attracting diverse audiences. This cross-pollination of audiences can introduce jazz to new fans and challenge preconceived notions about who jazz is for.