Jazz is… Not Free

You’ve all heard the saying “free jazz.” Or maybe you’ve heard some discordant, hard-to-follow music in a seeming flurry of notes, and said, “Is this what they mean by ‘free jazz’?” It is and it isn’t. Free Jazz was a genuine phenomenon in the music, spearheaded by players like Ornette Coleman, Archie Shepp, Cecil Taylor, Albert Alyer and Pharaoh Sanders, exemplified by John Coltrane’s “sheet of sound” technique as well