FREEDOM & EXPLORATION

WHEN THE RULES STARTED TO DISAPPEAR

By the late 1950s, Jazz musicians had already pushed harmonic complexity to extraordinary lengths. But…

Miles Davis wanted to simplify.
John Coltrane wanted to explore.
And other musicians wanted to remove the rules completely.

Jazz was about to enter one of its most adventurous periods.

08 — KIND OF BLUE CHANGES THE GAME

In 1959, Miles Davis released Kind of Blue.

Instead of relying heavily on constantly changing chord progressions, the musicians were given more open harmonic structures around which they could improvise.

This became known as Modal Jazz and the effect was enormous.

The musicians had space.

Bill Evans could create delicate harmonic landscapes.
John Coltrane could explore melodic ideas.
Cannonball Adderley could inject Blues and Soul into the music.
And Miles could leave enormous amounts of space between his notes.

The album demonstrated something fundamental about Jazz:

Sometimes less information creates more freedom.

Kind of Blue would become one of the most influential Jazz recordings ever made, and Miles Davis would continue searching for new possibilities rather than repeating what had already worked.

09 — JOHN COLTRANE GOES FURTHER

If Miles Davis was interested in space, John Coltrane was interested in exploration. His playing became increasingly intense and spiritual.

Albums such as Giant Steps, My Favorite Things, Impressions and A Love Supreme documented a musician constantly pushing against the boundaries of what Jazz could be.

Coltrane absorbed Blues, Gospel, modal jazz, Indian ragas and avant-garde experimentation.

His music could be beautiful, aggressive, or meditative.

And sometimes it sounded like he was searching for something that couldn't quite be expressed through conventional musical language.

That search became part of Jazz itself.

10 — FREE JAZZ

And then… Some musicians decided that even the rules of harmony and structure were unnecessary.

Ornette Coleman.
Cecil Taylor.
Albert Ayler.
Sun Ra.

The music that became known as Free Jazz challenged conventional ideas about melody, harmony, rhythm and composition.

Not everyone liked it. Some listeners considered it chaotic, while others heard something liberating. But that was the point.

Jazz had always been about freedom. But now there were some musicians asking what would happen if they pushed that freedom as far as possible.

The result was one of the most experimental periods in the history of recorded music. And although Free Jazz would remain a relatively specialised world, its philosophy mattered.

Jazz musicians didn't have to stay inside the boundaries of the genre.
They could take the music anywhere.