This doctoral project is concerned with exploring the notion of a musical-philosophical interdisciplinarity, couched in terms of a shared sense of improvisatory and temporal-rhythmical practices of advanced research enquiry. The results of my investigation will produce an intellectual contribution of potential benefit to both fields – and, in particular, to a creative middle-ground in the form of the nascent field of Performance Philosophy. By means of a series of practice-as-research experiments in improvised music-making in jazz performance and composition, I will explore my central research questions concerning (1) the operation, interaction, and elaboration of disciplinary practices; (2) the potential of music-making to undertake research of a (Deleuzian) philosophical nature; and (3) how an interdisciplinary perspective on the resonances between improvised practices in jazz and philosophical enquiry may potentially cast new light on our understandings of the ontological and epistemological boundaries/horizons of, and between, disciplinary fields.
The primary method of my investigation will be my own music practice as a professional jazz pianist and composer, brought into relation with more traditional research discourse, making for a practice-as-research undertaking benefitting a mixed-mode approach. The eventual submitted thesis will express this multimodality in both form and content, comprising audio-visual materials documenting the music-making interrelated with a discursive component – the latter drawing on a range of research writings in music/performance and philosophy.  My doctoral enquiry will build on and expand my activities of a professional and an academic nature in recent years, in which I have presented my research at a series of conferences and guest lectures at a national and international level, in addition to finding publication in a growing number of journals/books in the fields of music/performance and philosophy.