When we talk about a jazz "standard" we usually mean one of the many songs that jazz musicians repeatedly play as part of their core repertoire. But unlike musical works in the tradition of so-called classical music, standards--whether plucked from the "Great American Songbook" or from recordings by other jazz musicians--are always being transformed in performance. They are rearranged and improvised upon, given new chords and altered melodies. These transformations might be small and seemingly unimportant, or they might be radical revisions. Which raises the question: across all of these various performances, what gives a standard its identity? In Hearing Double author Brian Kane answers that question by offering a new theory of musical works that can account for the unique challenges presented by standards. Building from the bottom up--from the actual practices of jazz musicians toward their philosophical implications--he gives a comprehensive theory of how a standard can undergo
