free jazz
A radically experimental style that abandons fixed chord progressions, melodies, and sometimes rhythm.
In Depth
Free jazz, pioneered by Ornette Coleman, Cecil Taylor, and John Coltrane in the late 1950s and 1960s, sought to liberate improvisation from all predetermined structures. Musicians interact spontaneously, responding to each other's energy and ideas without a predetermined harmonic or rhythmic framework. Free jazz can be ecstatic, abrasive, lyrical, or chaotic. It remains the most polarising style in jazz, inspiring both devotion and bewilderment.
Ornette Coleman's album Free Jazz (1961) featured two quartets playing simultaneously with no predetermined structure, and the cover art was a Jackson Pollock painting.