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More Free Jazz Artists |
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Eric Dolphy Sonny Sharrock Cecil McBee Larry Young James Blood Ulmer Leroy Jenkins Errol Parker Henry Threadgill Don Cherry Max Roach Lester Bowie Roscoe Mitchell Peter Brötzmann Carla Bley Joe Maneri Charles Mingus Marc Ribot Cecil Taylor Joe McPhee Misha Mengelberg Mal Waldron Roswell Rudd Sam Rivers Sunny Murray Booker Little |
Eugene Chadbourne George Russell Albert Ayler Anthony Braxton Ornette Coleman John Coltrane Chick Corea Jack DeJohnette Bill Frisell Charlie Haden Andrew Hill Keith Jarrett Rahsaan Roland Kirk Steve Lacy David Murray John Zorn Pharoah Sanders Sun Ra World Saxophone Quartet Larry Willis Archie Shepp Albert Mangelsdorff Jimmy Giuffre Elvin Jones Paul Bley |
| Dixieland and swing stylists improvise melodically, and bop, cool, and hard bop players follow chord structures in their solos. Free Jazz was a radical departure from past styles, for typically after playing a quick theme, the soloist does not have to follow any progression or structure and can go in any unpredictable direction. When Ornette Coleman largely introduced free jazz to New York audiences (although Cecil Taylor had preceded him with less publicity), many bop musicians and fans debated about whether what was being played would even qualify as music; the radicals had become conservatives in less than 15 years. Free jazz, which overlaps with the avant garde (the latter can use arrangements and sometimes fairly tight frameworks), remains a controversial and mostly underground style, influencing the modern mainstream while often being ignored. Having dispensed with many of the rules as far as pitch, rhythm, and development are concerned (although it need not be atonal or lack a steady pulse to be free jazz), the success of a free jazz performance can be measured by the musicianship and imagination of the performers, how colorful the music is, and whether it seems logical or merely random. | |
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Eric Dolphy Sonny Sharrock James Blood Ulmer Leroy Jenkins Billy Higgins Don Cherry Abdullah Ibrahim Ken Nordine Lester Bowie Roscoe Mitchell Peter Brötzmann Joe Maneri Cecil Taylor Joe McPhee Mal Waldron Roswell Rudd Sam Rivers Sunny Murray Elvin Jones Paul Bley Albert Ayler Anthony Braxton Ornette Coleman John Coltrane |
Sun Ra World Saxophone Quartet Archie Shepp Albert Mangelsdorff Jackie McLean The Art Ensemble of Chicago Jimmy Garrison Bill Dixon Marion Brown Jazz Composer's Orchestra of America George Adams Last Exit Jim Pepper Air Old and New Dreams John Carter Fred Hopkins Ed Blackwell Andrew Cyrille Chick Corea Jan Garbarek Charlie Haden Steve Lacy David Murray John Zorn Pharoah Sanders |
| Free Funk is a mixture of avant-garde jazz with funky rhythms. When Ornette Coleman formed Prime Time in the early '70s, he had a "double quartet" (comprised of two guitars, two electric bassists, and two drummers, plus his alto) performing with freedom tonally but over eccentric funk rhythms. Three of Coleman's sidemen (guitarist James "Blood" Ulmer, bassist Jamaaladeen Tacuma, and drummer Ronald Shannon Jackson) have since led free funk groups of their own, and free funk has been a major influence on the music of the M-Base players, including altoists Steve Coleman and Greg Osby. | |
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James Blood Ulmer Lester Bowie Steve Coleman Ornette Coleman Jack DeJohnette Ronald Shannon Jackson Gary Thomas Miroslav Vitous Greg Osby |
Cassandra Wilson Christian McBride Derek Bailey Byard Lancaster Kazutoki Umezu Strata Institute Al Macdowell Jamaaladeen Tacuma The Golden Palominos James Chance Ned Rothenberg |
Avant-Garde Jazz differs from free jazz in that it
has more structure in the ensembles (more of a "game plan")
although the individual improvisations are generally just as
free of conventional rules. Obviously there is a lot of overlap
between free jazz and avant-garde jazz; most players in one
idiom often play in the other "style" too. In the best
avant-garde performances it is difficult to tell when
compositions end and improvisations begin; the goal is to have
the solos be an outgrowth of the arrangement. As with free jazz,
the avant-garde came of age in the 1960s and has continued
almost unnoticed as a menacing force in the jazz underground,
scorned by the mainstream that it influences. Among its founders
in the mid-to-late '50s were pianist Cecil Taylor, altoist
Ornette Coleman and keyboardist-bandleader Sun Ra. John Coltrane
became the avant-garde's most popular (and influential) figure,
and from the mid-'60s on, the avant-garde innovators made a
major impact on jazz, helping to push the music beyond bebop
