Notes on Free Jazz (Part 1)

A rough summary of Ekkehard Jost's genre primer – including essential listening

For people not familiar with the music, free jazz might feel chaotic, unstructured, even hostile.

That’s why the genre is often subject to rejection, ridicule and misunderstanding.

When I discovered free jazz, I was into industrial, metal and grindcore – but this music sounded even more radical. It felt like an epiphany.

The “New Thing”, as it was referred to in the 1960s, never went mainstream. Steve Reich said it aptly once, referring to the atonal composers of the early 20th century: When you leave Western music tradition behind, you choose a niche existence.

Even from the fringes of culture, free jazz keeps on inspiring adventurous musicians and listeners. I believe every real music nerd will go through a free jazz phase in their journey. Some, like me, never leave it behind.

German musicologist Ekkehard Jost first published his book Free Jazz in 1974. One of his main insights was that despite its name, the genre is not at all “free” of rules. New conventions had formed and developed within the scene at this point.

Early free jazz needs to be viewed within its socio-political context in the Black liberation era. Jost’s book is largely missing that angle, that’s why I recommend adding Val Wilmer’s As Serious As Your Life: Black Music and the Free Jazz Revolution 1957–77 to your introduction.

However, Jost analyzed the music itself deeply, dedicating each chapter to a pioneering musician or group.

This is an intro post to free jazz, inspired by reading Jost’s book. I will follow his chapter structure and assemble each musician’s or group’s key achievements in the early history of free jazz. I’m including one or two central works as essential listening for each one.

What I’m leaving out is most of the detailed musical analysis. I’m not a musicologist, nor a musician. I hardly know how to read music and don’t even consider myself a free jazz expert; I’ve just loved the music for three decades by now.

This post is designed to help you find an entrance point into the vast world of free improvisation. In order to truly understand the trajectory of the musicians mentioned below, I recommend studying Jost’s and Wilmer’s books – and listen to more of the artists’ works, deeply and repeatedly.

Chapter 1: John Coltrane and modal playing

Jazz in the 1950s was dominated by hard bop.

As the name says, it was a progression of bebop, an effort to make this highly complex music simpler and more accessible, focusing on a fast, swinging backbeat, blending in elements of rhythm and blues.

By the end of the decade, that style had run its course. Due to its popularity among the club crowd, some kept playing it well into the 1960s.

In 1959, Miles Davis released the influential album Kind of Blue. It wasn’t a hard bop record, but established a new style called modal jazz.

Until then, jazz performers had improvised within a rigid harmonic framework around certain chord progressions. Now they were just given a set of scales (modes) to improvise upon, without pre-determined duration.

That approach had two important consequences:

• It gave the musicians more freedom to experiment and express themselves.

• Musicians had to listen to each other more closely to recognize when the mode was changing.

These aspects were fundamental to the development of free jazz.

One of the players on Kind of Blue was the gifted tenor saxophonist John Coltrane. Throughout the next years, he’d expand on the modal approach, moving further and further away from his hard bop roots.

In 1961, Coltrane started playing with Eric Dolphy, a like-minded young clarinetist and flautist who knew jazz as well as European and Indian classical music.

They didn’t play free jazz (yet), but moved back and forth between their bop roots and more avant-garde ideas. The music from that early-1960s period is often referred to as ‘post-bop’ – a gradual depart, not a full-on revolution.

During their residency at famous New York jazz club The Village Vanguard in 1961, they would perform a tune called “India” – a long, meditative declaration of their love for Indian music, later released on Coltrane’s album Impressions.

It was still a modal piece, but they treated the mode very freely.

For Ekkehard Jost, “India” marks a new evolutionary phase of Coltrane’s playing, when he started exploring tone colour and sound manipulation.

These stylistic shifts enraged jazz critics at the time. An editor of DownBeat magazine even wrote that Coltrane and Dolphy were about to “destroy” jazz by giving up swing as a concept.

These harsh reactions to relatively slight changes showed how strongly the establishment clung to tradition.

Over the next years, Coltrane would stay within the modal jazz framework but explore elements from the avant-garde.

His album A Love Supreme, recorded in 1964 and released in January 1965, is widely seen as the crowning achievement of that period. (Jost seems to think of it as overrated – I don’t agree with that.)

Formally, the album would still qualify as post-bop. Technically, it’s a through-composed suite, but features elements of free improvisation. The vague genre descriptor of ‘spiritual jazz’ was coined for it because of its religious undertone, but that’s really more of an umbrella term.

Coltrane’s collaborations with Eric Dolphy and his early to mid-1960s quartet albums weren’t free jazz, but they were trojan horses, smuggling avant-garde ideas into the jazz mainstream.

Listening

• John Coltrane – “India”, on: Impressions (Impulse!, 1963)

• John Coltrane – A Love Supreme (Impulse!, 1965)

Chapter 2: Charles Mingus

Let’s be clear: Charlie Mingus didn’t play free jazz either.

The virtuoso bassist came up in the bop era but kept moving forward in the second half of the 1950s, similar to Miles and Coltrane.

According to Jost, the main difference was that “Mingus accepts the old formal patterns, but alters them by filling them with new content.”

Mingus played a key role for the development of free jazz because of two aspects:

• He diluted the traditional line between ‘rhythm section’ and ‘soloists’ within a group setting by giving bass and drums equal influence.

• He diluted the traditional line between ‘composer’ and ‘player’ through his explorations of collective group improvisation.

In a traditional jazz band, bass and drums would have to listen to the soloists; their role was to keep time and swing.

Mingus would often take the lead on a piece though, gradually changing its tempo, even going as far as altering meters and rhythms. The musicians that played with him had to listen very closely to what he did, not the other way around.

During the 1950s, Mingus also started his Jazz Workshops, drawing the musicians into the compositional process via collective improvisation.

As an example of this practice, Ekkehard Jost refers to his 1960 piece “Folk Forms, No. 1” from the quartet album Charles Mingus Presents Charles Mingus.

Though set on a standard 12-bar blues, this recording includes long stretches of relatively free group improvisations:

“One rarely hears a steady beat, and hardly any continuous harmonic basis. Nobody accompanies, nobody solos. The general mood of this music is hectic, nervous, but not chaotic.”

Eric Dolphy, who would go on to support Coltrane’s move away from his bop roots, plays various wind instruments on this tune.

Again, Mingus didn’t play free jazz. But he pushed the idea of collective improvisation, which would become essential to the music of Ornette Coleman.

Listening

Charles Mingus – “Folk Forms, No. 1” on: Charles Mingus Presents Charles Mingus (Candid, 1960)

Chapter 3: Ornette Coleman

When alto saxophonist Ornette Coleman arrived on the New York scene in the late 1950s, he was immediately hailed by some, dismissed by others.

Though he had solid technique, he clearly wasn’t a virtuoso like Coltrane. He couldn’t look back on years cutting his teeth in a famous big band. Coleman had spent the 1950s playing in unsuccessful groups and living through a personal odyssey of poverty.

His strength was that he’d focused on studying music theory and composition – and he had some revolutionary ideas.

After releasing two early albums in 1958/59, he assembled his iconic quartet with Don Cherry, Charlie Haden and Billy Higgins for The Shape of Jazz to Come. The album title was a stroke of marketing genius.

Coleman’s music had a shock effect on the public.

That shock came through the negation of what was perceived as essential elements of jazz music, mostly the use of a pre-determined harmonic framework for improvisation.

While the structure and rhythm of his compositions were defined by an almost folkloristic simplicity, Coleman ignored Western conventions such as the equal-tempered scale, manipulating his instrument, making it sound almost like a human voice.

Critics and listeners talked a lot about his “wrong intonation” and “wrong technique” in the early days.

“Coleman may accept the formal structure of the blues, [but] he rejects its harmonic implications”, Ekkehard Jost writes, explaining that Coleman’s early music was in no way atonal, but very much had a “tonal center”. Still, it was fundamentally different to what Miles and Coltrane did at the same time.

Jost goes on to compare Coleman’s style of improvisation to modernist literature like James Joyce’s stream-of-consciousness or surrealist writing.

His brilliant compositions were widely accepted right away. Many of them became jazz standards. But listeners and musicians often didn’t get the connection between the themes and Coleman’s and Cherry’s improvisations. Which is understandable, because that unity, as Jost aptly writes, was “more emotional than formal.”

Equally important for the development of free jazz were Coleman’s group improvisations. Though his early attempts felt rather tame, even in comparison to what Mingus already did at the time, this changed radically in 1960, with the album Free Jazz: A Collective Improvisation.

Two full quartets were assembled in the studio: his usual quartet plus Eric Dolphy, Freddie Hubbard, Scott La Faro and Ed Blackwell. The two groups are heard on the recording in separate channels, playing simultaneously.

Free Jazz is a 36-minute free-form piece, divided into two parts for the original vinyl LP. Recorded in one take with no overdubs or edits, it’s really an album-length collective improvisation.

There are solo and ensemble passages; some of the ensemble passages were written out. A tonal center was agreed upon, but no fixed timing.

The musicians listen closely to each other, challenge and react to each other, creating a network of interaction and counterpoint. The result sounds wild and exciting, sometimes outright dissonant. It never dissolves into pure chaos though.

Ornette Coleman didn’t aim to create a new genre. He wanted the album title to be understood as an imperative, a battle cry to free the music from the rules and conventions of Western music tradition.

As a key feature of the album, Jost identifies “the move away from individual monologuizing soloists towards a kind of collective conversation.”

Interestingly, Coleman didn’t keep on working with bigger groups and collectives. He made a few more quartet records, then went on a two-year hiatus from playing music.

When he re-emerged on the scene in 1965, he played violin and trumpet in addition to the saxophone. He would now mostly perform with a trio.

Increasingly frustrated with the jazz industry and the commercial clubs, Coleman became a pioneer of New York’s ‘loft jazz’ scene from the late 1960s onwards, turning his apartment building in SoHo into a performance venue and an artist guest house.

Jasper Marsalis alias Slauson Malone 1 covered his composition “Peace” during live shows in 2024. It’s not exactly surprising that to this day, young experimental artists keep getting inspired by Coleman’s genius.

With his explorative spirit and DIY ethics, he was the quintessential free jazz artist.

Listening

• Ornette Coleman – The Shape of Jazz to Come (Atlantic, 1959)

• Ornette Coleman – Free Jazz: A Collective Improvisation (Atlantic, 1960)

Chapter 4: Cecil Taylor

In 1974, Ekkehard Jost couldn’t know that the pianist would keep performing for four more decades, transcending his free jazz roots and essentially becoming one of the greatest artist-composers of the 20th century.

Two influences were present in Taylor’s music from the beginning: American orchestral jazz and the European classical avant-garde.

In the early 1950s, Taylor studied piano, theory and composition and first got in contact with classical New Music from the Viennese School, Bartók and Stravinsky. He’d seen jazz groups in his native New York and felt inspired by bebop pianists Bud Powell and Thelonious Monk.

Purists and traditionalists dismissed Taylor’s music from the start. The reason for this hostility, Jost writes, is quite simple: Other than Miles’, Coltrane’s and even Ornette Coleman’s music, it lacked swing in any sense of the word – which is deemed necessary for many jazz fans to enjoy the music.

Instead of swing, Taylor introduced a new category into jazz: energy. He’d often use fists and forearms on the keys. When playing live, Taylor was notorious for going full force over a long time – the intense group improvisations of his Units (that’s how he called his groups) could last for over an hour.

Jost writes:

“The polarity of two dominating kinetic forces – swing and energy – is of essential significance for the whole evolution of free jazz. This polarity gave rise to two fundamentally different modes of creation, two ‘schools’ whose distinctive stylistic features go far beyond different approaches to rhythm. (…) In Coleman and his ‘school’, the old swing is integrated into a new context. Cecil Taylor, on the other hand, does not refashion swing by placing it in a new setting, but places it entirely with a new quality, energy.”

By the late 1950s, Taylor had developed his distinctive musical language, but it wasn’t until he started playing with drummer Sunny Murray in 1961 that his vision felt coherent in a group context.

The drummers before Murray had tried to confine Taylor to a steady rhythm, but Murray soon did away with any objective tempo. Andrew Cyrille, who became Taylor’s next drummer in 1964, followed him on that path and perfected free-form playing.

Jost notes that if Taylor’s music falls below a certain tempo threshold, with neither swing nor energy highlighting its jazz qualities, it often resembles classical New Music. He admits it is probably “the most atonal in early free jazz”, but adds that “all things are relative”.

In 1966, Cecil Taylor recorded two essential dates for Blue Note, Unit Structures and Conquistador! Both are intense demonstrations of Taylor’s concept of musical energy.

Taylor wouldn’t enter a recording studio for a long time after that; most of his discography over the next decades would be recorded live on stage.

In general, his music has a very low degree of predictability. That’s why it confuses the uninitiated listener, but that’s also what makes it attractive for connoisseurs.

Listening to Taylor is hard work. You need to be present at all times. He won’t just dissolve into the background.

Jost again:

“By demonstrating that spontaneity and constructionism need not be mutually exclusive, Taylor shows that the freedom of free jazz does not mean the complete abstention from every kind of musical organization. Freedom lies, first and foremost, in the opportunity to make a conscious choice from boundless material.”

Listening

• Cecil Taylor – Unit Structures (Blue Note, 1966)

• Cecil Taylor – Conquistador! (Blue Note, 1966)

Chapter 5: John Coltrane in 1965–67

In the first half of the 1960s, John Coltrane was one of the most acclaimed and successful jazz musicians in the world.

But at the end of 1965, he would make the biggest, most courageous shift of his career.

Until then, he’d recorded with an established group of stellar players: Pianist McCoy Tyner, bassist Jimmy Garrison and drummer Elvin Jones.

For Ascension, released in 1966, he’d invite a bunch of young musicians who were virtually unknown outside of New York. They were part of the second generation of free jazzers, building on the innovations of Ornette Coleman and Cecil Taylor.

“The New Thing” had been going on for some years by now. That one of the biggest jazz artists on the planet would wholeheartedly embrace the movement, was considered a scoop at the time.

Pharoah Sanders, Freddie Hubbard, Dewey Johnson, Marion Brown, John Tchicai and Archie Shepp joined Coltrane’s standard quartet in the studio for Ascension. Two takes were recorded on the same day. It was an intense, emotional recording; at the end of the session, people in the studio were screaming out loud. That tension can be felt on the record.

There are clear parallels to be found between Ascension and Ornette Coleman’s Free Jazz, recorded five years prior. Both are longform collective improvisations by large ensembles; John Coltrane has famously described Ascension as “a big band thing”.

But Jost also points out a huge difference:

“In the collective improvisations of Free Jazz, the contributions of each and every improviser have a certain melodic life of their own; motivic connections and dove-tailing of the various parts create a polyphonic web of interactions. In Ascension, on the other hand, the parts contribute above all to the formation of changing sound-structures, in which the individual usually has only a secondary importance.”

In other words: Coltrane wanted the individual to dissolve in the collective. He didn’t want to be the “star”. On Ascension, there was no bandleader, only bandleaders – plural. No soloists, only soloists. It was a spiritual thing, a communal thing.

While Coleman wanted to facilitate “chamber music dialogue between musicians”, Coltrane’s aim was to build “orchestral sound structures”.

After Ascension, Coltrane stayed on his path, mixing free jazz techniques with his signature ‘spiritual jazz’ style in smaller groups. Pharoah Sanders stayed with him; McCoy Tyner and Elvin Jones left the quartet and were replaced by Coltrane’s wife Alice on piano and Rashied Ali on drums. (Ali had been booked for Ascension, but pulled out at the last minute.)

On his last three albums in 1966/67 and some of the posthumously released material, Coltrane further explores tone colour to express his deep spirituality. Jost doesn’t mention the album explicitly, but I want to recommend Interstellar Space, his radical duo recording with Rashied Ali.

Leaving modal improvisation behind, Coltrane played a lot of what Jost calls “rubato ballads” in his last years. They’re not either calm or active – due to their free tempo he can move between those poles, just like life itself is never really just one or the other.

Coltrane died in 1967, but his influence on the second generation of free jazzers, not just in New York, was tremendous. At the end of his life, the transition from post-bop to free jazz was completed.

Listening

• John Coltrane – Ascension (Impulse!, 1966)

• John Coltrane/Rashied Ali – Interstellar Space (Impulse!, 1967/1974)