Central to the development of abstract art, in the early decades of the 20th century was the conception (most famously articulated by Walter Pater) that the most appropriate paradigm for non-figurative art was music. The assumption has always been that this model was most effectively understood as Western art music (classical music).

However, the musical form that was abstract art's true twin is jazz, a music that originated with African Americans, but which had a profound impact on European artistic sensibilities. Both art forms share creative techniques of rhythm, groove, gesture and improvisation. This book sets out to theorize affinities and connections between, and across, two seemingly diverse cultural phenomena.