Avant-garde jazz (also known as avant-jazz, experimental jazz, or "new thing") is a style of music and

improvisation Improvisation, often shortened to improv, is the activity of making or doing something not planned beforehand, using whatever can be found. The origin of the word itself is in the Latin "improvisus", which literally means un-foreseen. Improvis ...

that combines

avant-garde In the arts and literature, the term ''avant-garde'' ( meaning or ) identifies an experimental genre or work of art, and the artist who created it, which usually is aesthetically innovative, whilst initially being ideologically unacceptable ...

art music Art music (alternatively called classical music, cultivated music, serious music, and canonic music) is music considered to be of high culture, high phonoaesthetic value. It typically implies advanced structural and theoretical considerationsJa ...

and composition with

jazz Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, Louisiana, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Its roots are in blues, ragtime, European harmony, African rhythmic rituals, spirituals, h ...

. It originated in the early 1950s and developed through the late 1960s. One of the earliest developments within avant-garde jazz was that of

free jazz Free jazz, or free form in the early to mid-1970s, is a style of avant-garde jazz or an experimental approach to jazz improvisation that developed in the late 1950s and early 1960s, when musicians attempted to change or break down jazz conventi ...

, and the two terms were originally synonymous. Much avant-garde jazz is stylistically distinct, however, in that it lacks free jazz's thoroughly improvised nature and is either fully or partially composed.

History

1950s

While some avant-garde jazz concepts were originally developed in the late 1940s(such as the collective

free improvisation Free improvisation or free music is improvised music without any general rules, instead following the intuition of its performers. The term can refer to both a technique—employed by any musician in any genre—and as a recognizable genre of ...

on Lennie Tristano's 1949 works of "

Intuition Intuition is the ability to acquire knowledge without recourse to conscious reasoning or needing an explanation. Different fields use the word "intuition" in very different ways, including but not limited to: direct access to unconscious knowledg ...

" and "Digression"), the advent of avant-garde jazz (synonymous with free jazz at the time) is usually considered to be sometime in the mid- to late 1950s. As a genre, avant-garde jazz was founded among a group of improvisors who rejected the conventions of

bebop Bebop or bop is a style of jazz developed in the early to mid-1940s in the United States. The style features compositions characterized by a fast tempo (usually exceeding 200 bpm), complex chord progressions with rapid chord changes and numerou ...

and post bop in an effort to blur the division between the written and the spontaneous aspects of these genres. In addition to continuing the tradition of experimentation within jazz (a phenomenon evidenced by the development of earlier offshoots of bebop, such as cool jazz, modal jazz, and hard bop), jazz artists would also begin incorporating

modernist Modernism was an early 20th-century movement in literature, visual arts, and music that emphasized experimentation, abstraction, and Subjectivity and objectivity (philosophy), subjective experience. Philosophy, politics, architecture, and soc ...

ideas, such as

atonality Atonality in its broadest sense is music that lacks a tonal center, or key. ''Atonality'', in this sense, usually describes compositions written from about the early 20th-century to the present day, where a hierarchy of harmonies focusing on ...

and serialism. With the release of The Shape of Jazz to Come in 1959, saxophonist

Ornette Coleman Randolph Denard Ornette Coleman (March 9, 1930 – June 11, 2015) was an American jazz saxophonist, trumpeter, violinist, and composer. He is best known as a principal founder of the free jazz genre, a term derived from his 1960 album '' Free Ja ...

paved the way for free (and avant-garde) jazz. Soon thereafter, he was joined by

Cecil Taylor Cecil Percival Taylor (March 25, 1929April 5, 2018) was an American pianist and poet. Taylor was classically trained and was one of the pioneers of free jazz. His music is characterized by an energetic, physical approach, resulting in comple ...

, and they formed the "first wave" of avant-garde jazz music. Eventually, some would come to apply avant-garde jazz differently from

; avant-garde jazz emphasizes structure and organization by the use of composed melodies, shifting but nevertheless predetermined meters and tonalities, and distinctions between soloists and accompaniment (rather than a "free" approach to improvisation devoid of predetermined structure).

1960s

After the birth of avant-garde jazz in the 1950s, the "second wave" of avant-garde jazz was marked by artists such as

John Coltrane John William Coltrane (September 23, 1926 – July 17, 1967) was an American jazz saxophonist, bandleader and composer. He is among the most influential and acclaimed figures in the Jazz#Post-war jazz, history of jazz and 20th-century musi ...

, Eric Dolphy,

Charles Mingus Charles Mingus Jr. (April 22, 1922 – January 5, 1979) was an American jazz Double bass, upright bassist, composer, bandleader, pianist, and author. A major proponent of collective Musical improvisation, improvisation, he is considered one of ...

, and Albert Ayler (among others). In Chicago, the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians began pursuing their own variety of avant-garde jazz. The AACM musicians ( Muhal Richard Abrams,

Anthony Braxton Anthony Braxton (born June 4, 1945) is an American experimental composer, educator, music theorist, improviser and multi-instrumentalist who is best known for playing saxophones, particularly the alto. Braxton grew up on the South Side of Chi ...

, Roscoe Mitchell, Hamid Drake, and the Art Ensemble of Chicago) tended towards

eclecticism Eclecticism is a conceptual approach that does not hold rigidly to a single paradigm or set of assumptions, but instead draws upon multiple theories, styles, or ideas to gain complementary insights into a subject, or applies different theories i ...

. Poet

Amiri Baraka Amiri Baraka (born Everett Leroy Jones; October 7, 1934 – January 9, 2014), previously known as LeRoi Jones and Imamu Amear Baraka, was an American writer of poetry, drama, fiction, essays, and music criticism. He was the author of numerous b ...

, an important figure in the Black Arts Movement (BAM), recorded spoken word tracks with the New York Art Quartet (“Black Dada Nihilismus,” 1964, ESP) and Sunny Murray (“Black Art,” 1965, Jihad).Amiri Baraka, "Where's the Music Going and Why?", ''The Music: Reflections on Jazz and Blues.'' New York: William Morrow, 1987. p. 177-180. While avant-garde jazz did gain some traction throughout the 1960s (especially with John Coltrane), most avant-garde jazz musicians did not enjoy the same levels of popularity. Avant-garde jazz gradually shifted from being performed mainly in jazz clubs to other spaces, such as museums and community performance centers, with some artists relocating to Europe.

References

Bibliography

* Berendt, Joachim E. (1992). ''The Jazz Book: From Ragtime to Fusion and Beyond''. Revised by Günther Huesmann, translated by H. and B. Bredigkeit with Dan Morgenstern. Brooklyn: Lawrence Hill Books. * Kofsky, Frank (1970). ''Black Nationalism and the Revolution in Music''. New York: Pathfinder Press. * Mandel, Howard (2008). ''Miles, Ornette, Cecil: Jazz Beyond Jazz''. Preface by Greg Tate. New York City: Routledge. {{DEFAULTSORT:Avant-Garde Jazz Jazz genres

Jazz Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, Louisiana, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Its roots are in blues, ragtime, European harmony, African rhythmic rituals, spirituals, h ...

1950s in music 1960s in music 20th-century music genres

History

1950s

1960s

See also

References

Bibliography