In the last 30 years, university conservatory programs have become central sites of jazz activity. As jazz continues to move into the university, its future will be increasingly determined by the institutions of higher education that shape the music's knowledge production, supply of musicians, and creative aesthetics. This thesis fills a need for additional scholarship on these university jazz conservatory programs as important sites of music making, while paying particular attention to the implications of university institutionalization on jazz. Through interviews of alumni of Temple University's jazz studies programs, I explore how students navigate issues of creative agency in the face of a uniform pedagogy promoted by the university; economic hardships for jazz which the university helps perpetuate; the symbiotic relationship between the university and its encompassing local community; and the value of a perceived "tradition" as promoted by university jazz studies programs. Though this "tradition" stems from African American cultural practices, particularly the post-bebop era of the 1940s to 1960s, I argue that university jazz programs such as Temple, following the lead of Jazz at Lincoln Center, present this jazz tradition as deracinated and stripped of its social context. As jazz continues to move into the realm of high art, its once culturally defined musical attributes become purely aesthetic material suitable for consumption and production as autonomous art in the conservatory. As a result, jazz becomes increasingly regarded in terms suiting a contemporary ideology of post-raciality, which in the name of greater inclusion risks losing the music's cultural particularity. The institutionalizing of jazz thus can act as a viewing lens into twenty-first century American society and prevailing ideologies of multiculturalism.

Over the last several decades, jazz has undergone a cultural shift from a music associated with social justice activism to an art music valued for its sophistication and complexity. This shift is regarded by academics as partially a result of jazz’s institutionalization within the upper segments of society, including the university, corporate sponsored music festivals, and nonprofit grant agencies. While scholars have considered these recent changes in relation to broader discourse in jazz, few have studied the effects of jazz’s institutionalization on a local jazz scene or on perceptions about jazz among the general public. Through ethnographic study of the jazz scene in the Twin Cities, Minnesota, in addition to case studies of contemporary jazz artists Nicholas Payton, BadBadNotGood, and Kamasi Washington, this project examines the effects of jazz’s institutionalization by considering how musicians, critics, and audiences have located jazz—culturally, socioeconomically, and historically—following this period of shift.

I argue that institutions impact jazz in a number of ways. One, they provide a degree of stability for local musicians that affords them the ability to pursue creative projects with less concern for commercial viability. Two, institutions have cemented what I term a normative path of development for a jazz musician, wherein access to jazz is most abundant among more privileged segments of society. Three, institutions have resulted in jazz undergoing a process of sacralization, where jazz becomes considered as a high art music removed from material concerns, a process that is alternately embraced and contested by musicians, critics, and listeners. Four, the association of jazz with institutions has created a negative image for jazz among the general public, a perception that is only recently beginning to reverse course. As it progresses into its second century of existence, jazz in the 2010s continues to accumulate new meanings and to reflect the wider structural inequalities in American society.