Free jazz
Jazz style from about 1960 that abandons fixed harmonic, metric, and formal schemes (Ornette Coleman).
What it means
Free jazz is a jazz style that arose from about 1960 and abandons fixed harmonic, metric, and formal schemes. The musicians improvise freely, often collectively and without a prescribed chord progression, and shape pitch, rhythm, and tone color according to the moment.
Musical use
The saxophonist Ornette Coleman is regarded as the pioneer; his album Free Jazz: A Collective Improvisation (1960) gave the style its name. Other defining musicians are John Coltrane in his late phase, Albert Ayler, and the pianist Cecil Taylor. A distinct scene also developed in Europe, for instance with the saxophonist Peter Brötzmann. Free jazz is regarded as a radical break with the conventions of bebop and modal jazz.
Free jazz should be distinguished from bebop, which improvises fast and freely but is tied to fixed chord progressions, and from modal jazz, which uses scales as its basis. It differs from the new music of composers in that it rests on improvisation in the moment instead of an elaborated score.
Performance practice
In free jazz, listen to the interplay of the musicians: they react to each other instead of following a scheme. If you improvise yourself, listen attentively, take up motifs of the others, and use silence and noise as means of expression too.