Full Description
}Ornette Coleman's discovery some thirty years ago that his band's music was indeed a "free thing" marked the beginning of a revolution in jazz. From the early free-form experiments, Coleman's dancing blues, and John Coltrane's saxophone cries and sheets of sound, to the brittle, melancholy modes of Miles Davis, vibrant, sophisticated new jazz idioms proliferated. In this critical and historical survey of today's jazz, noted critic John Litweiler traces the evolution of the new music through such artists as Coleman, Coltrane, Davis, Cecil Taylor, Eric Dolphy, Sun Ra, Albert Ayler, Anthony Braxton, and others. He also addresses questions such as: Is Free jazz a rejection of the jazz tradition? Are European folk classical musics altering this essentially Afro-American art? Do the principles of Free jazz provide real emotional liberation for the creative musician? This is a solid, informed guidefor new jazz fans and serious listeners aliketo what has, in many ways, been the most productive and most controversial period in the history of jazz. }
Contents
Steps in search for freedom; Ornette Coleman - the birth of freedom; Eric Dolphy; John Coltrane - the passion for freedom; transition - Miles Davis and modal jazz; the free jazz underground and Sun Ra; Albert Ayler; Chicago, sound and space, and St Louis; Cecil Taylor; pop-jazz, fusion and romanticism; free jazz in Europe - American, national, international; Leo Smith, Anthony Braxton, Joseph Jarman, and Roscoe Mitchell; free jazz today.
