Avant-garde jazz

"Experimental jazz" and "Experimental big band" redirect here. For similarly-described types of jazz, see Free jazz, Progressive jazz, and Nu jazz.

Avant-garde jazz (also known as avant-jazz) is a style of music and improvisation that combines avant-garde art music and composition with jazz.[1] It originated in the 1950s and developed through the 1960s.[2] Originally synonymous with free jazz, much avant-garde jazz was distinct from that style.[3]

History

1950s

Avant-garde jazz originated in the mid- to late 1950s among a group of improvisors who rejected the conventions of bebop and post bop in an effort to blur the division between the written and the spontaneous. It came to be applied to music differing from free jazz, emphasizing structure and organization by the use of composed melodies, shifting but nevertheless predetermined meters and tonalities, and distinctions between soloists and accompaniment. Musicians identified with this early stage of the style include Cecil Taylor, Lennie Tristano, Jimmy Giuffre, Sun Ra, and Ornette Coleman.[4]

1960s

John Coltrane's experimental work was influential during this decade. Alice Coltrane, his wife, was an advocate along with other saxophonists Archie Shepp, Pharoah Sanders and Albert Ayler. 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, Roscoe Mitchell, Hamid Drake, and the Art Ensemble of Chicago) tended towards eclecticism. Poet Amira Baraka, an important figure in the Black Arts Movement,[5] recorded spoken word tracks with the New York Art Quartet (“Black Dada Nihilismus,” 1964, ESP) and Sonny Murray (“Black Art,” 1965, Jihad).[6]

See also

Notable avant-jazz musicians and groups

Bibliography

References

  1. ↑ Choice, Harriet (Sep 17, 1971). "'Black Music' or 'Jazz'". Chicago Tribune.
  2. ↑ Cook, Richard (2005). Richard Cook's Jazz Encyclopedia. London: Penguin Books. p. 25. ISBN 0-141-00646-3.
  3. ↑ Gridley, Mark C.; Long, Barry (n.d.). Grove Dictionary of American Music (second ed.). Oxford University Press. Retrieved 6 March 2016.
  4. ↑ Mark C. Gridley and Barry Long, "Avant-garde Jazz", The Grove Dictionary of American Music, second edition, supplement on Grove Music Online 4 October 2012.
  5. ↑ "A Brief Guide to the Black Arts Movement". Poets.org. Retrieved 8 March 2016.
  6. ↑ Amiri Baraka, "Where's the Music Going and Why?", The Music: Reflections on Jazz and Blues. New York: William Morrow, 1987. p. 177-180.
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