  We show how many contemporary issues in event generation can be recast in
terms of partonic calculations with a matching scale. This framework is called
GenEvA, and a key ingredient is a new notion of phase space which avoids the
problem of phase space double-counting by construction and includes a built-in
definition of a matching scale. This matching scale can be used to smoothly
merge any partonic calculation with a parton shower. The best partonic
calculation for a given region of phase space can be determined through physics
considerations alone, independent of the algorithmic details of the merging. As
an explicit example, we construct a positive-weight partonic calculation for
e+e- -> n jets at next-to-leading order (NLO) with leading-logarithmic (LL)
resummation. We improve on the NLO/LL result by adding additional
higher-multiplicity tree-level (LO) calculations to obtain a merged NLO/LO/LL
result. These results are implemented using a new phase space generator
introduced in a companion paper [arXiv:0801.4028].
