Free Jazz

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.

Free Jazz

Avant-Garde Jazz 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. ~ Scott Yanow

Experimental Big Band Experimental big bands began to incorporate elements of free jazz and improvisation as early as the '60s, and fueled by the work of smaller avant-garde ensembles and classical composers, increased their scope in the following decades to embrace atonal music, discordance and increasingly complex structures. From the post- bop beginnings of groups like the Sun Ra Arkestra and Carla Bley's big band, to the full-on chaos of the Little Huey Creative Music Orchestra, experimental big bands produce an amazing diversity of sounds within the large group format.

Free Improvisation Free improvisation represents the culmination of the avant-gardist musician¹s quest for complete, uncompromised freedom. To improvise means to perform without preparation, to make music on the spot. Improvising is nothing new: classical composers like Mozart were accomplished improvisers. But free improvisation lets the musician do whatever he wants, regardless of any rule. Rhythm, harmony, melody, even respect for the physical integrity of the instrument itself (preparations and home-built instruments are often used) are shattered. The free improviser channels his creative energy through his instrument and plays. A lot harder than it may seem, free improvising requires extensive musical and psychological training, as the musician must attain a high level of concentration, an ability to metaphorically strip naked in front of the audience, and if he is not performing alone, to listen to the other improvisers in order to interact with them if he doesn¹t want to get isolated. Free improvisers come from very diverse backgrounds -- jazz (Cecil Taylor, Derek Bailey), rock (Thurston Moore), electronica (Fennesz, Jim O'Rourke, Voice Crack), even classical (Patrick Scheyer, Aki Takase) -- and perform in settings ranging from solo to large groups called creative orchestras. Free improvisation is not the same as free jazz, although some key musicians like Bailey and Taylor came from such a background.

Free Improvisation Free jazz often remained anchored in its originating idiom, using heads and licks to structure the improvised material. There is no such thing in free improvisation -- being freed of all rules, it cannot be traced back to a genre other than the very generic term "avant-garde." As a style, free improv started to emerge in the late 1960s, mainly on the Berlin and London scenes, when people like Peter Brötzmann and the musicians revolving around (and trained by) John Stevens started to push American free jazz into more abstract territories. Brötzmann¹s 1968 LP Machine Gun shattered the world of free jazz and pioneered a form of improv characterized by extreme energy levels. Around Stevens and his Spontaneous Music Ensemble, a group of musicians developed an approach to improvisation relying on listening, toning down, trying to "become" the other musicians while being oneself, instead of attempting to outplay the other participants. This school of free improv is best exemplified by the productions released on the record label Emanem. In the late 1990s/early 2000s, an even more radical approach to free improvisation emerged, based on silence and the use of very short, very fragmented musical gestures. People like John Butcher, Axel Dörner, Franz Hautzinger and Radu Malfatti first explored these extremes.

Structured Improvisation Free improvisation implies that there was no planning done before the performance, that no rules were stated. Some improvisers prefer to use structured improvisation to give a backbone to the music or simply to vary the context of performance. Structured improvisations are often credited to a "composer," i.e. the musician who devised the piece. It may have a score, but no notes (or very few) are specified. Abstract graphics are drawn or sets of rules regarding range, timbre, speed, etc. are outlined. Sometime the "composition" part can be limited to directives concerning the order of appearance, for example: the alto saxophone will start the piece, then there will be three sets of duets and everyone will join in for the last part. In other circumstances, the rules can be quite complex and take the form of an interactive game. An improvisation can also be structured instantly by a conductor who, through the use of body gestures (even dance, in the case of Masashi Harada) or showing of cards, will give more or less clearly defined signals to the improvisers. Such conduction (a term coined by Lawrence "Butch" Morris for conducting an improvisation) is often used by creative orchestras, ensembles in which the number of free improvising musicians is too big to make listening to everyone possible. A central "listener" is then designated to lead the group. Artists like John Zorn (his game pieces, mostly) and Anthony Braxton, and ensembles like the London Improvisers Orchestra regularly perform structured improvisations. ~ François Couture