Jazz in Worship and Worship in Jazz : exploring the musical language of Liturgical, Sacred, and Spiritual Jazz in a Postsecular Age

Saxophonist and composer Uwe Steinmetz researches religiously inspired jazz. His primary research interests include the generation of religious meaning in jazz music, how religious experience can inspire jazz composition, and practice-based adaptions and explorations of George Russell’s Lydian Chromatic Concept. Steinmetz inter-weaves aspects of jazz history with his own artistic practice, basing his theories on transdisciplinary fields such as music theory, neurology, the history of religion and theology in twenty-five original compositions. Conclusions from this dissertation present six distinct ways of expressing religious belief in jazz, generating new post secular perspectives on jazz, and demonstrate how Russell’s musical philosophy builds a bridge between Western classical sacred music and jazz. Suggested areas for further research include microtonality and twelve-tone tonality in jazz, as well as the embod¬iment of faith through music as an extension of the institutional church in society.