Avant-garde jazz
{{Short description|Music genre}}
{{redirect2|Experimental jazz|Experimental big band|similarly-described types of jazz|Free jazz|and|Progressive jazz|and|Nu jazz}}
{{Infobox music genre
| name = Avant-garde jazz
| other_names = Experimental jazz
| image =
| caption =
| stylistic_origins = * Jazz
| cultural_origins = Mid-1950s United States
| derivatives = *Free jazz
| other_topics = * Jazz fusion
}}
Avant-garde jazz (also known as avant-jazz, experimental jazz, or "new thing"){{cite book|title=Experimentalisms in Practice: Music Perspectives from Latin America|page=8|year=2018|publisher=Oxford University Press|isbn=978-0190842765}}{{Cite news |last=Hyams Ericsson |first=Marjorie |date=April 8, 1965 |title='Experimentation' in Public: The Artist's Viewpoint |work=DownBeat |pages=15}} is a style of music and improvisation that combines avant-garde art music and composition with jazz.{{cite news|last1=Choice|first1=Harriet|title='Black Music' or 'Jazz'|publisher=Chicago Tribune|date=Sep 17, 1971}} It originated in the early 1950s and developed through the late 1960s.{{Cite book| last = Cook| first = Richard| year = 2005| title = Richard Cook's Jazz Encyclopedia| publisher = Penguin Books| location = London| isbn = 0-141-00646-3| pages = 25}} One of the earliest developments within avant-garde jazz was that of free jazz, 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.{{cite book |last1=Gridley |first1=Mark C. |last2=Long |first2=Barry |title=Grove Dictionary of American Music |date=n.d. |edition=second |publisher=Oxford University Press |url=http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/ |access-date=6 March 2016 |archive-date=10 April 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200410045043/http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/ |url-status=live }}
History
=1950s=
While some avant-garde jazz concepts were originally developed in the late 1940s(such as the collective free improvisation on Lennie Tristano's 1949 works of "Intuition" and "Digression"),{{Cite book |last=Shim |first=Eunmi |title=Lennie Tristano: His Life in Music |date=28 March 2007 |publisher=University of Michigan Press |isbn=978-0472113460 |pages=50}}{{Cite web |title=Lennie Tristano {{!}} Biography, Music, & Facts {{!}} Britannica |url=https://www.britannica.com/biography/Lennie-Tristano |access-date=2025-03-11 |website=www.britannica.com |language=en}} 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.{{Cite web |title=Free jazz {{!}} Improvisation, Avant-Garde & Fusion {{!}} Britannica |url=https://www.britannica.com/art/free-jazz |access-date=2025-03-11 |website=www.britannica.com |language=en}}{{Citation |last=Pressing |first=Jeff |title=Free jazz and the avant-garde |date=2003 |work=The Cambridge Companion to Jazz |pages=202–216 |editor-last=Horn |editor-first=David |url=https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/abs/cambridge-companion-to-jazz/free-jazz-and-the-avantgarde/579E09E0CC38E887D273791CE5C53D42 |access-date=2025-03-11 |series=Cambridge Companions to Music |place=Cambridge |publisher=Cambridge University Press |isbn=978-0-521-66320-5 |editor2-last=Cooke |editor2-first=Mervyn}} As a genre, avant-garde jazz was founded 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 aspects of these genres.{{Cite web |title=Free jazz {{!}} Improvisation, Avant-Garde & Fusion {{!}} Britannica |url=https://www.britannica.com/art/free-jazz |access-date=2025-03-11 |website=www.britannica.com |language=en}} 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 ideas, such as atonality and serialism.{{Cite web |last=Kernodle |first=Tammy L. |date=2020 |title=Beyond the Chord, the Club, and the Critics: A Historical and Musicological Perspective of the Jazz Avant-Garde |url=https://walkerart.org/collections/publications/jazz/creative-black-music-introduction |access-date=10 March 2025 |website=Walker Art Center |series=Creative Black Music at the Walker: Selections from the Archives |publisher=Walker Art Center |publication-place=Minneapolis}}
With the release of The Shape of Jazz to Come in 1959, saxophonist Ornette Coleman paved the way for free (and avant-garde) jazz. Soon thereafter, he was joined by Cecil Taylor, and they formed the "first wave" of avant-garde jazz music. Eventually, some would come to apply avant-garde jazz differently from free jazz; 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).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.
=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, Eric Dolphy, Charles Mingus, 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, Roscoe Mitchell, Hamid Drake, and the Art Ensemble of Chicago) tended towards eclecticism. Poet Amiri Baraka, an important figure in the Black Arts Movement (BAM),{{cite web|title=A Brief Guide to the Black Arts Movement|url=https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/text/brief-guide-black-arts-movement|website=Poets.org|access-date=8 March 2016|archive-date=10 April 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200410045047/https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/text/brief-guide-black-arts-movement|url-status=live}} 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.
See also
References
{{Reflist}}
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. {{ISBN|1-55652-098-0}}
- 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. {{ISBN|0415967147}}
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{{Experimental music genres}}
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