Avant-garde jazz

Avant-garde jazz (also known as avant-jazz, experimental jazz, or "new thing") is a style of music and improvisation that combines avant-garde art music and composition with jazz. It originated in the early 1950s and developed through the late 1960s. One of the earliest developments within avant-garde jazz was that of free jazz, and the two terms were originally synonymous. Much avant-garde jazz is stylistically distinct, however, in that it lacks free jazz's thoroughly improvised nature and is either fully or partially composed.