This doctoral research explores contemporary European vocal jazz through artistic practice and through encounters with singers and specialists from across Europe. Rather than trying to define a single European vocal identity, I investigate how individual singers develop their own musical voices through dialogue, listening, improvisation, language, and shared artistic experience.
American vocal jazz is built on a long and well-established tradition. In Europe, vocal jazz has developed along many different and intersecting paths since the 1970s. European jazz singers remain deeply connected to the history and aesthetics of American jazz, while developing their own approaches, influenced by their languages, musical cultures, artistic encounters, and individual backgrounds. What emerges is therefore not one European style of vocal jazz, but a diversity of individual practices.
The research is grounded in a series of encounters and interviews with European jazz singers and specialists conducted between 2019 and 2023, together with the exploration of their artistic practices and my own work as a singer, composer, improviser, and educator. These encounters form the basis of the podcast series Vocal Jazz Encounters: A European Journey, which is at the heart of this doctoral research.
My artistic practice also became a space in which the research could develop, in particular through the projects Ellipse and Between Whispers. Questions and encounters emerging from the research found their way into composition, lyric writing, improvisation, collaboration, and performance.
Throughout this journey, the voice appears as much more than an instrument carrying a melody. Sound, articulation, language, personal background, and bodily experience all contribute to the way a singer develops an individual musical voice. The research therefore approaches European vocal jazz not as a single style, but as a field of diverse voices, connected by shared histories, questions, practices, and encounters