@mcmullin Thanks - that’s a really interesting and observant point, and the relationship to jazz is something I’ve often thought about. But how you’ve framed it (with a wording I’d not thought of at all) is so excellent: “the harmonies tasting jazz fed.” Because like you, I feel no pull toward explicitly playing in that territory - and when people reference jazz pieces as a comparison my feeling is that the music isn’t really being “heard”. But yes; to say the tonal language carries no aspects of those influences would be a kind of wilful denial! 😅

It’s lovely too to hear that you improvise in these “jazz fed” worlds. I imagine you’re also drawn to a sort of post-Romantic tonal dissolve that Impressionism drew from? (and jazz kind of later absorbed in its own way.) Probably what we gravitate toward is that less codified pool - where the harmony carries emotional ambiguity without the rhythmic and idiomatic commitments that give jazz its *particular* identity.

PS - not at all saying I enact the results successfully. The above is a later reading. The rest is dependent on the day, limits, joints and (im)patience of the person whose piano I’m borrowing. 😅

@Cognessence

If I had kept my trombone chops up, I would definitely play more in a jazz style—on the exploratory side, not necessarily straight-ahead, but with undisguised roots in jazz. And if I had jazz musicians wanting to play my compositions, I’d compose more jazz for them. But I mostly work with classical musicians, so I try to write to their strengths. Still, it all has some relationship to jazz, though it’s rarely explicit or on the surface.

@Cognessence

You’re right though that if it only draws on jazz harmony, without jazz inflection, phrasing and rhythmic idioms—and without improv—then it’s probably really closer to post-impressionist or free-atonal classical music. To me it feels like a big part of my musical language comes from jazz, but I wouldn’t expect jazz heads to think so.