Avant-garde jazz, also called avant-jazz, experimental jazz, or "new thing," is a type of music that mixes avant-garde art music with jazz. It began in the early 1950s and grew through the late 1960s. One of the first styles within avant-garde jazz was free jazz, and the two terms once meant the same thing. However, many forms of avant-garde jazz are different from free jazz because they are not completely made up on the spot. Instead, they are fully or partly planned and written out.

History

Some ideas for avant-garde jazz began in the late 1940s, such as group improvisation in Lennie Tristano’s 1949 recordings "Intuition" and "Digression." However, the start of avant-garde jazz (which was also called free jazz at the time) is usually linked to the mid- to late 1950s. This style of jazz was created by musicians who wanted to move away from the rules of bebop and post-bop. They aimed to mix planned musical elements with spontaneous creativity. These artists continued the tradition of jazz experimentation, which had already appeared in earlier styles like cool jazz, modal jazz, and hard bop. They also began using modernist ideas, such as atonality and serialism.

In 1959, saxophonist Ornette Coleman released The Shape of Jazz to Come, which helped introduce free and avant-garde jazz. Soon after, Cecil Taylor joined him, and together they became part of the "first wave" of avant-garde jazz. Over time, some musicians began to use the term "avant-garde jazz" differently from "free jazz." Avant-garde jazz focuses on structure, using planned melodies, predictable but changing rhythms, and clear roles for soloists and accompaniment, rather than completely free improvisation without rules.

In the 1960s, the "second wave" of avant-garde jazz included artists like John Coltrane, Eric Dolphy, Charles Mingus, and Albert Ayler. In Chicago, the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) developed their own style of avant-garde jazz. AACM musicians, such as Muhal Richard Abrams, Anthony Braxton, Roscoe Mitchell, Hamid Drake, and the Art Ensemble of Chicago, often used a wide range of musical influences. Poet Amiri Baraka, a key figure in the Black Arts Movement, worked with groups like the New York Art Quartet and Sunny Murray, recording spoken word tracks such as “Black Dada Nihilismus” (1964) and “Black Art” (1965).

Although avant-garde jazz gained some attention in the 1960s, especially through John Coltrane’s work, most avant-garde musicians did not become widely popular. Over time, performances of avant-garde jazz moved from jazz clubs to other places, such as museums and community centers. Some artists even moved to Europe to continue their work.