John Coltrane and the Avant Garde

Topics we will discuss and learn:

• John Coltrane created new harmonic progressions that revolutionized the music
• Coltrane extended Miles Davis’ modal approach that took jazz to the next era
• Coltrane brought spirituality and world cultures to the forefront in jazz music
• Avant garde movement
• Key figures in the avant garde

John Coltrane created new harmonic progressions that revolutionized the music

Coltrane mastered the bebop language set forth by Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie and began to play the phrases and patterns with such speed and facility they were called, by the jazz critic Leonard Feather, “sheets of sound.”

In bebop Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie added more chord changes to familiar tunes to make them more challenging and interesting.  Coltrane took this approach a step further and added different chord changes based on mathematical principles.  His new chord progressions became known as “Coltrane changes.”  The changes move in intervals of a minor third and a fourth and can be substituted over the traditional bebop and swing era ii-V chord changes.

Coltrane extended Miles Davis’ modal approach that took jazz to the next era

Miles began writing tunes that had less chord changes as opposed to more of them.  He followed the same forms of songwriting such as the Blues form and the AABA song form but used less chords.  To improvise over these songs musicians such as Cannonball Adderley, Bill Evans, and John Coltrane used scales which are known as modes to create melodic solos, hence the term “modal jazz.” This freed up the musicians from having to navigate their way over restrictive bebop chord changes.  Instead they could make up their own changes over the music.  Coltrane took this idea of modal playing and suffused his new approach to chord changes.  This gave him many ideas which he took long solos to try and explore them.  Some of his solos lasted for 15 to 30 minutes long. 

Coltrane brought spirituality and world cultures to the forefront in jazz music

Coltrane studied many world cultures including those of India, Africa, Middle East and China in a quest to understand the religious and musical traditions of various peoples.  This impacted his music not only in the naming of various tunes such as “India” and “Africa,” but in the scales and patterns that he played which were based on certain five-note or pentatonic scales that existed in various regions. 

He also was very spiritual having been brought up in the Black church tradition and his album “A Love Supreme” is about the love of God.  He believed in all religions as a pathway to God and felt that music was a way for people to reach the spirit world.

Avant Garde movement

The avant garde movement created a huge division in the audience of jazz.  Many people felt that the new free jazz was not jazz at all, it wasn’t even music.  Free jazz sought to break through the boundaries of chord changes, structure, and rhythm and create a new music based solely on the interaction between the musicians and their feeling and mood at the time.  This demanded a lot from the improviser because there was nothing for him/her to fall back on and they had to come up with completely new ideas within their solos.

Key figures in the avant garde

Ornette Coleman – alto saxophone player who released an album called “Free Jazz”

which became the moniker of the avant garde movement.  He improvised without preset chord changes and chorus lengths to make a music “free” of the conventional jazz structure.

            Charles Mingus – bass player and composer who played with many of the jazz greats

including Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, and Dizzy Gillespie and is second only to Ellington in the breadth and scope of his compositions.  He wrote more than 150 pieces and blended many eras of jazz from Dixieland and Swing to Bebop and Free Jazz. 

Sun Ra – bandleader and composer who led an avant garde big band that played and

performed music that was based on world music and chants.  They also played eclectic instruments and used collective improvisation in a big band setting.

Cecil Taylor – pianist that had amazing technique and was a key figure in the avant

garde movement.  His improvisations were more about textures than creating melody.

Eric Dolphy – alto saxophone player, flute player, and bass clarinetist who played

with Coltrane and experimented with the range of sounds each instrument

could make by mimicking bird calls and other sounds.

            Art Ensemble of Chicago – an avant garde collective of musicians and performers who

were based out of Chicago and put on a full performance complete with poetry in their shows.

           

Terms and topics to know:

Avant garde

Coltrane changes