A Look at Two Styles Influencing the Current Jazz Landscape
Are you confused when you read or hear the terms “free jazz” or “free improvisation?” Are free jazz and free improvisation the same thing? If not, how are they different? Why the preface “free?” Isn’t jazz already about the freedom to improvise as one pleases?
This article is a basic introduction to these idioms, and explains the distinction between free jazz and free improvisation.
Free Jazz
Free Jazz, also called “The New Thing,” “Avant-Jazz,” or “Nu-Jazz,” refers to a style of music in which some traditional elements of jazz, such as swing, chord changes, and formal structure, are often intentionally disregarded.
Saxophonist Ornette Coleman was one of the first musicians who played with this style, and his early recordings provide a helpful introduction. It was his 1961 album called Free Jazz (Atlantic Records) whose title was adapted to refer to the musical approach itself.
Before the term “free jazz” became the indicator for an entire musical process, Ornette Coleman stirred up the jazz world with his album “The Shape of Jazz To Come” (Atlantic 1959). The album, which is a member of this site’s list of “Ten Classic Jazz Recordings,” features improvisations that depart from the forms laid out in the melodies. On each track, the melody is merely a suggestion for improvisation, and the musicians don’t adhere to the harmonies, rhythmic underpinnings, or formal structure associated with it. Each player is limited only by his imagination.
On The Shape of Jazz to Come, swing is retained, giving the album a jazz character even though many other elements associated with jazz are stripped away. Both Coleman and cornetist Don Cherry affect vocal-like timbres, intentionally playing with less-than-precise pitch. Through this technique, they expand on the concept of individualism, a bedrock element of jazz. On Free Jazz, Coleman discards even unison melodies in favor of a long, free-form improvisation with no single tempo, harmonic framework or repeating form. In so doing, he departs even further from jazz, and more towards another musical development: Free improvisation.
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