Free jazz

Free jazz is a movement of jazz music which was developed in the 1950s and 1960s by

Free jazz is a movement of jazz music which was developed in the 1950s and 1960s by artists such as Ornette Coleman, Eric Dolphy, Cecil Taylor, Albert Ayler, Joe Harriott, Archie Shepp, Bill Dixon and Paul Bley. Some of the best known examples are the later works of John Coltrane. Though the music produced by these players varied widely, the common feature was a dissatisfaction with the expressive possibilities of bebop, hard bop, and modal jazz; each in his own way, free jazz musicians attempted to break down or extend the conventions of jazz, often by discarding hitherto invariable features of jazz such as fixed chord changes or tempos.

Though "free jazz" is the generally used term nowadays, many other terms have been used. In the 1960s, the loosely-defined movement was sometimes called "Energy Music" or "The New Thing". Free-jazz players were other said to be playing "outside" or "out" (as opposed to "inside"--conventionally), and the word became a favorite one among musicians and record labels: albums from this period include Outward Bound, Out There, Out to Lunch (all by Dolphy), Out Front (Jaki Byard), and Destination Out (Jackie McLean).