Artistic Research in Jazz and Popular Music

Organisers

• Michael Kahr

  Dr. Michael Kahr is a jazz pianist, composer/arranger, musicologist and artistic researcher. He serves as Professor for Artistic Research, Chair of the Center for Artistic Research and Dean at JAM MUSIC LAB Private University in Vienna. He is also Senior Artist at University of Music and Performing Arts Graz. He currently leads a project funded by the city council of Vienna focusing on artistic research, urbanism and cartography. Key publications include an award-winning monograph, several articles, chapters, CDs and scores. He edited Artistic Research in Jazz (Routledge, 2022), co-edited the Routledge Companion to Jazz & Gender (2023) and ARJAZZ Journal (2025). Kahr is founder of INARJ, board member of the International Society for Jazz Research (ISJ) and working group member of AEC PJP and ARTinRARE.

• Monika Herzig

  Dr. Monika Herzig is Professor for Artistic Research and Vice Rector at JAM MUSIC LAB Private University in Vienna. Author of “David Baker – A Legacy in Music” (IU Press, 2011) and “Experiencing Chick Corea” (Rowman & Littlefield, 2017), she co-edited “Jazz and Gender” (Routledge, 2022). She chairs the Jazz Education Network (JEN) research committee, co-edits ARJAZZ, and serves on the JAZZ editorial board. As a jazz pianist, she has toured worldwide, opened for Tower of Power, Sting, and Yes, and earned DownBeat awards with NPR and JazzWeek features. Her supergroup Sheroes was voted one of the world’s best jazz groups of 2018 by DownBeat. Her composition “Just Another Day at the Office” is featured in “New Standards” (Berklee Press, 2022). Awards include a 1994 DownBeat Best Original Song, 2015 JJA Hero, and grants from NEA and others. She is a CASIO Artist.

• Mike Fletcher

  Dr. Mike Fletcher is a woodwind multi-instrumentalist, composer, arranger and researcher. He is a Research Fellow at Royal Birmingham Conservatoire, part of Birmingham City University, and engages in research spanning jazz, traditional, and improvised music practice, musicology and philosophy. He is a founder committee member of the International Network for Artistic Research in Jazz (INARJ), has presented his work at conferences across Europe, and his academic writing has been published by Routledge and Leuven University Press. His most recent research project, funded by AHRC, investigated the musical and cultural impact of saxophonist Ornette Coleman’s early music. He was recently awarded Arts Council England funding to develop an improvisation methodology based on the bagpipe traditions of Northumbria and the Scottish borders.

• Matthias Heyman

  Dr. Matthias Heyman is Assistant Professor at Vrije Universiteit Brussel and Senior Lecturer at Koninklijk Conservatorium Brussel (Erasmus University College), where he reads jazz history and coordinates the research group “Jazz, Improvised and Popular Music.” He obtained his Ph.D. at the University of Antwerp and his MA in jazz performance at the Royal Conservatoire Antwerp, and remains active as a freelance jazz and orchestral bassist. Matthias’ research interests are (Belgian) jazz history, double bass, artistic research, and historical recreation in jazz and popular music. He is currently working on a monograph on jazz bassist Jimmie Blanton for Oxford UP and has co-edited the 2023 volume The Beatles and Humour: Mockers, Funny Papers, and Other Play with Bloomsbury.

  Contact: matthias.heyman@ehb.be 

• Birgitta Flick

  Dr. Birgitta Flick is a saxophonist, composer, improvisor and independent artistic researcher. She is particularly interested in the interplay between notation and improvisation, as well as in exploring collaborative creative working methods. Her artistic work has been recognized with awards such as the 2025 German Jazz Prize in the category "Composition/Arrangement of the Year," and is documented through an extensive discography as well as a choir edition by Swedish Gehrmans Musikförlag. She holds a doctoral degree in artistic research from the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna, obtained by a thesis researching a musical composition’s transformative potential.

  Contact: mail@birgittaflick.com

• Sebastian P. D. Bailey

  Sebastian P. D. Bailey is a doctoral candidate in jazz performance at the University of Toronto. A jazz musician, composer, and artist-researcher, he has taught at the Universität der Künste Berlin and serves on the Steering Committee of the International Network for Artistic Research in Jazz (INARJ) Symposia. Drawing on his work with Montreal’s Improvisation Workshop Project, his doctoral research uses artistic citizenship as an analytical lens to examine the practices of the Neu Berlin Institute of Improvising Musicians. He has received awards including the Calder Spanier Prize for Composition and the Irene R. Miller Anoush Khoshkish Fellowship in Music.

  Contact: sebastianpdbailey@gmail.com

• Piergiorgio Pirro

  Dr. Piergiorgio Pirro is a jazz pianist, composer and researcher. He obtained a doctoral degree in the Arts at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel with the dissertation Spectral Techniques in Small-Ensemble Jazz Practice. His research investigates the application of approaches from spectralism to jazz performance, with a particular emphasis on extemporary co-creative processes. He currently leads the artistic research project “Encounters at the Crossing: Jazz tradition in dialogue with the Belgian and French jazz avant-garde” at the Koninklijk Conservatorium Brussel. Pirro’s research addresses practices of hybridization in jazz, and how music can be made and understood in relation to avant-garde and traditional positions. His academic work is developed in close dialogue with his artistic activity, which takes shape through his work as a bandleader, collaborative projects, and recordings. He is the recipient of scholarships from the Horlait-Dapsens Foundation for the Arts and Siena Jazz.