Free Jazz
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 avantgarde 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 midto-late '50s were pianist Cecil Taylor, altoist Ornette Coleman and
keyboardist-bandleader Sun Ra. John Coltrane became the avantgarde'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 postbop 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