Musicians, records and collaborations

Explore jazz through its connections.

No record exists in isolation. JazzMesh reveals the musicians, collaborations and trajectories connecting the recorded history of jazz.

Versioned snapshot · documented sources · explainable paths

JazzMesh is a free, independent project born from a passion for jazz and data. This demonstration version is provisional and continues to evolve.

Affiche éditoriale JazzMesh mêlant saxophoniste, typographie et graphe de connexions

382 995: record editions analysed
160 661: distinct records
76 655: musicians and groups indexed
1935—2000: period studied

A different view

From catalogue to living territory.

Zoom into the network, open a musician portrait, follow a line-up or compare labels. Each view turns a list of credits into a path of discovery.

JazzMesh network overview — 01Each colour groups musicians who are often credited together. Node size reflects their importance in the network; artists positioned between several groups act as bridges.

Miles Davis collaboration network in JazzMesh — 02Choose a musician to display their collaborators. Stronger links indicate several shared records; open another name to continue exploring.

Jazz label comparison in JazzMesh — 03Each label is connected to the musicians most present in its catalogue. An artist linked to several labels reveals a path across different record companies.

Miles Davis line-up evolution in JazzMesh — 04Records are ordered over time and lines follow musicians from one record to the next. They reveal a line-up’s core, departures, arrivals and returns.

JazzMesh discographic catalogue and Discogs styles — 05Search for a record, musician, label, genre or style, then combine filters. Each card brings together the title, year, credited artists and styles declared in Discogs.

Leader and sideman profiles in JazzMesh — 06For each musician, JazzMesh separates records credited to them as leader from those on which they appear as a collaborator. The comparison shows both sides of their career.

Three uses

Discover. Research. Share.

The same relationship can become a discovery, evidence or a mediation tool.

Discover

Start with a record or musician and let collaborations take you somewhere unexpected.

Unexpected paths · bridge artists · neighbourhoods

Research

Query credits, styles, labels and periods within a bounded, documented corpus.

Filters · comparisons · view exports

Make a trajectory legible for a class, article, exhibition or editorial project.

Visualisations · provenance · methodology

Personal project

A passion-led exploration, not a product for sale.

JazzMesh is currently a free, independent demonstration created by someone passionate about jazz, data and mapping. This website is provisional: it shares an idea, invites feedback and helps the experience evolve, with no current plan to commercialise it.

Free access
No subscription or payment
Content and features still evolving

The project

An idea by Pascal Cottereau.

I am a strategy, marketing and digital projects consultant with a long-standing interest in jazz, data and the relationships hidden behind music.

JazzMesh is an experimental ground for knowledge graphs, network analysis, recommendation, open data and artificial intelligence.

Find Pascal on LinkedIn

Instead of asking “What sounds like this record?”, JazzMesh asks: “Where can this record take you?”

Talk about JazzMesh

A comment, an idea or a path worth exploring?

JazzMesh is an evolving personal project. Feedback from musicians, listeners, teachers, researchers and curious visitors can genuinely help it improve.