In 1975, legendary trumpeter Miles Davis famously declared, "Jazz is dead." For Princeton senior Megan Summers (Academy 99-02), a budding jazz historian, Davis’ pronouncement helped inspire her thesis research into the development of jazz education in America.

Summers, a history major and certificate candidate in African-American studies, investigated how the genre has been affected by the rise of formal jazz education programs beginning in the late 1960s. With its mainstream popularity waning, the jazz community focused on sustaining itself through educational programs emphasizing the music’s history and artistry rather than continued innovations and social commentary, according to Summers.

Megan Summers played saxophone at the Arts Academy under the instruction of Bill Sears, who was also one of her primary sources for her Princeton thesis.

"While widespread school programs gave the music a greater level of accessibility to students desiring to master it, jazz education made the genre less accessible to American mainstream culture, less representative of any sort of common experience," Summers writes. "The music lost its shared role of parallel motion with 20th-century social progress in the midst of an environment of heightened intellectualism. What was once a historically folk genre of music, providing a creative outlet for previously voiceless members of society, transformed into a classical, canonized version of its former self."

The project was inspired by Summers’ experience as a student of jazz performance and "trying to figure out how that fits in with the whole concept of an improvisational music," she said in an interview. A saxophonist since age 12, the Fort Wayne, Indiana native played with the jazz ensemble in the Arts Academy. While studying at Princeton she continues to play on her own and hosts a jazz program on the student-run WPRB radio station.

Summers’ research also was driven by the fact that "people like Miles Davis said that jazz is dead. I'm trying to look at some of the reasons why that might have happened and how the jazz community responded to this reality they were facing," she said.