Free Jazz

Free Jazz: 26 upcoming festivals, including 8 with tickets on sale.

Free Jazz, also known as the "New Thing," is an avant-garde approach to jazz characterized by its rejection of conventional harmonic structures, fixed tempos, and predetermined chord changes, often resulting in highly energetic, improvisational, and sometimes dissonant soundscapes. Emerging in the 1950s and 60s, it arose from dissatisfaction with the perceived limitations of bebop, hard bop, and modal jazz, seeking to expand or break traditional jazz conventions. Iconic artists like Ornette Coleman, John Coltrane, and Albert Ayler pioneered this revolutionary style. Its cultural impact lies in its radical redefinition of jazz and its influence on subsequent experimental music forms.

Parent genreJazz