Avant-garde jazz (also known as avant-jazz, experimental jazz, or "new thing")[1][2] is a style of music and
improvisation that combines
avant-gardeart music and composition with
jazz.[3] It originated in the early 1950s and developed through to the late 1960s.[4] Originally synonymous with
free jazz, much avant-garde jazz was distinct from that style.[5]
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.
Ornette Coleman and
Cecil Taylor led the way, soon to be joined by
John Coltrane. Some would come to apply it differently 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.[6]
^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.
^Amiri Baraka, "Where's the Music Going and Why?", The Music: Reflections on Jazz and Blues. New York: William Morrow, 1987. p. 177-180.
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.
ISBN1-55652-098-0
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.
ISBN0415967147