Avant-garde jazz

Avant-garde jazz (also known as avant-jazz) is a style of music and improvisation that combines avant-garde art music and composition with jazz. Avant-jazz often sounds very similar to free jazz, but differs in that, despite its distinct departure from traditional harmony, it has a predetermined structure over which improvisation may take place. This structure may be composed note for note in advance, partially or even completely. The origins of avant-garde jazz are in the innovations of the immediate acolytes of Charlie Parker. Based in New York City, now-canonical musicians such as Charles Mingus, Miles Davis, and John Coltrane introduced modal improvisation and experimented with atonality and dissonance. Sun Ra, Cecil Taylor, and Ornette Coleman became a new vanguard of controversial jazz innovators, outside the range of what many fans considered listenable. John Coltrane's increasingly experimental work, and the Impulse! label became the flagbearers of the avant-garde jazz scene... full article at wikipedia