The Front Line of the Avant-Garde : While many who stretch the limits of jazz rely on foreign labels, some are landing U.S. recording contracts.

The current jazz resurgence has been spearheaded by Wynton and Branford Marsalis, Courtney Pine, Marcus Roberts and the Harper Brothers. But these young, “neo-traditionalist” musicians have largely developed their personal approaches within the framework of the classic jazz styles established during the ‘50s and early ‘60s.

What about alternative ways of jazz improvising and composing? A number of musicians have been actively extending the boundaries of jazz since the mid-’60s, creating music which has generally been labeled avant-garde.

Several of them now have recording contracts with major labels: Steve Lacy and Henry Threadgill are on RCA’s Novus subsidiary, David Murray is with Epic and Don Cherry, Cecil Taylor and Sun Ra are signed to A&M.; The World Saxophone Quartet and Julius Hemphill record for Elektra’s Nonesuch label.

But before those deals, few, if any, of these artists had been recorded by an American label for more than a decade. Most have been signed by the same handful of interested executives who periodically acquire enough clout to bring artists playing more venturesome forms of jazz on to label rosters.

“Jazz is research and invention and it’s the music we must play,” said soprano saxophonist Steve Lacy. “We insist on playing this stuff and it’s something we have to fight for because we believe in it.

“I worked with Cecil Taylor for six years in the ‘50s and he really showed me what it meant to fight for what you believe in and to pursue your own story. My sextet had a lot of opposition in the ‘70s--about using a voice in jazz and mixing European and American musicians--but it started to die down in the ‘80s.”

Big sales figures certainly aren’t the attraction for labels. With decades of experience and critical accolades behind them, Steve Lacy and Henry Threadgill can expect sales in the 7,000-to-10,000 range, according to RCA figures. But such new, young players in the neo-traditionalist camp as Roy Hargrove and Christopher Hollyday already sell 15,000-to-20,000 copies and Marcus Roberts’ two solo albums have each topped the 50,000 plateau.

Most avant-gardists stretching the boundaries of jazz continue to rely on European and Japanese labels to record their music, so they’ve gone largely unheard by the American jazz audience.

“If the difficulty with which one can record this music at the major record company level is any barometer, the ‘80s was one of the most difficult periods this probing, experimental music in the jazz idiom could have faced,” said Novus president Steve Backer. “Everybody is looking for the next evolution in that entire genre of music and I don’t think it came about in the ‘80s.”

The avant-garde label first came into currency in the late ‘50s, largely through the innovations of Ornette Coleman and Cecil Taylor. Others following in their wake experimented with different playing techniques which incorporated atonality and extended compositions. During the “free jazz” period which flourished briefly in the mid-’60s, some dispensed with recognizable structures altogether.

“Younger musicians thought because we were playing free jazz that we were just playing anything that we could think of,” said Don Cherry, who rose to prominence in Coleman’s groundbreaking quartet. “They didn’t realized that we studied--coming through the be-bop period of learning the chords and forms of different standard songs and the ‘harmolodics’ (principles) of playing with Ornette. We played to keep the swing and flavor of the composition but we’re free to improvise new forms.”

During the ‘70s, avant-garde jazz became strongly identified with musicians from Chicago’s Assn. for the Advancement of Creative Musicians collective--artists such as Anthony Braxton and the Art Ensemble of Chicago. They, and others who rose to prominence during New York’s “loft jazz” period, developed their own creative formulas for mixing structured and free elements in their compositions and playing. Those formulas involved techniques drawn from contemporary classical composers, world music influences, and even new pop styles.

“I’m classed as an avant-garde, free musician but I feel free to play whatever I want, whether it’s a Stevie Wonder or Monk tune or Bob Marley,” said Cherry. “To me, it is one kind of music, one culture music. You have classical, folk and devotional music and some musicians play all that in one. John Coltrane did.”

But the individual approaches were often overlooked--virtually any post-Coltrane music which ventured outside mainstream jazz-playing styles and repertoire has been considered avant-garde. Now the tag is applied to such a wide range of individual and group styles that attempting to define an all-encompassing avant-garde sound is futile.

“How do you have an avant-garde in jazz?” asked New York vocalist Cassandra Wilson. “It’s a continuum and not so easily delineated into categories.”

Said Steve Backer: “It was a meaningful term and probably still is in the sense that it means probing, experimental music that stretches the boundaries of what’s really acceptable. Where it becomes silly is when somebody is still considered avant-garde after 20 or 25 years of performing and recording.”

The artists interviewed by the Times unanimously disliked the avant-garde label, calling it an outdated term that could hurt careers by virtue of cutting down on recording and performing opportunities. The strongest objection: being labeled avant-garde implied the music falls outside the jazz tradition.

Local pianist Horace Tapscott, who prefers the term Afro-American classic to jazz, agreed with Backer: “A lot of these so-called avant-garde guys have been playing this way for many years--this is just the way they approach their instruments. You can’t say these guys have no regard for traditional music because a lot of what they’re doing is built on what is, and will always be, traditional.”

New Jersey-based pianist Don Pullen worked with Charles Mingus in the early ‘70s and co-led a highly regarded quartet with saxophonist George Adams, which recorded for Dutch and Italian labels for ten years before landing an American label deal in 1987. The group released two albums on Blue Note before Pullen embarked on his current solo career--his second album for Blue Note is scheduled for release July 30.

“With jazz, avant-garde is considered as something that is not accessible, something that you must have some kind of extra sensibilities to understand . . . which is not the case,” he said. “Avant-gardist is a very limiting term and I’ve never liked it attached to my name because my background includes blues and gospel music, classical music of all kinds, backing rhythm & blues and pop singers--all of which I’ve always used in what I do.”

The debate hinges on a fundamental question: Is jazz a defined sound with a set of musical rules to be followed, or a creative spirit looking to discover new forms of self-expression?

Most musicians considered avant-garde fall in the latter camp. Several pointed out that Coleman Hawkins, Charlie Parker and Thelonious Monk were the avant-garde of their time and were only later lionized as jazz titans. The be-bop movement was considered avant-garde when it surfaced in the ‘40s and John Coltrane’s trailblazing early ‘60s quartet was once derided in print as “anti-jazz.”

Saxophonist Greg Osby, a leading figure in Brooklyn’s M-Base collective, said: “I want to keep progressing, which is in the tradition of the people who I idolize. The way Charlie Parker was playing rocked the world and I idolize him, but I’m not going to play like him just to validate what he did. To validate what I do is to be like him--to try to create something different, based upon what has preceded me.”

Are there significant new developments pushing the boundaries of jazz? The consensus among those interviewed for this article was that nothing on the current scene has the genre-shaking capabilities of Coleman and Taylor’s music in the ‘50s.

Many up-and-coming musicians have served lengthy apprenticeships as supporting musicians before recording as leaders. Others forge their own path, like the Shadow Vignettes and 8 Bold Souls units, led by the rising young Chicago saxophonist Ed Wilkerson Jr.

The most controversial new development has been M-Base, hailed in some quarters as a major innovation and dismissed in others as hype. Described by Osby as an umbrella structure, the informal group formed in the late ‘70s as a workshop for younger, like-minded players to experiment and also served a practical function as a referral service for gigs.

As many as 40 musicians have been involved with M-Base; about 15 are actively involved now, according to Osby. An M-Base sound has developed as the individual musicians fashioned their styles from a common pool of elements--including electronics, contemporary R&B; and rap rhythms and world music influences--built on a foundation of jazz improvisation.

“We try to appeal to younger people because we came up in an era of electronic music, R&B;, funk,” Osby said. “We implement a lot of ideas in our music that are accessible to the younger ear.

Most artists involved with M-Base--which has included such highly regarded young players as saxophonists Osby and Steve Coleman, pianist Geri Allen, Cassandra Wilson, guitarist Jean Paul Bourelly and drummer Marvin (Smitty) Smith--have extensive experience in traditional jazz settings as well. For instance, Wilson’s “Blue Skies” album last year featured classic pop standards, but she just turned full circle with the fully electric “Jumpworld” album.

Another new school has grown up in New York City around the Knitting Factory nightclub, which opened 3 1/2 years ago. Aside from seasoned jazz veterans and M-Base newcomers who don’t fit into New York’s mainstream clubs, the Knitting Factory also regularly features hard-to-label improvisers John Zorn and Bill Frisell and a number of experimental, rock-influenced units.

“The reason we’ve been having some success in promoting this music, which is impossible to label, is that we, in a sense, became the label for this new music,” said founder and co-owner Michael Dorf. “Our European tour this year exemplified that because people found calling it a Knitting Factory festival to be an ideal way of rounding the edges off.”

Most major American jazz festivals and concert series recycle the same artists and shy away from booking more adventurous artists altogether. Europe has been a far more receptive area for those artists over the past 20 years, and many rely on frequent tours and summer festival appearances there to survive.

That makes them a natural for labels like JMT--which has released several albums by M-Base members and other young artists like Tim Berne--and Italy’s Black Saint/Soul Note labels. But it usually translates to minimal sales figures and radio exposure in America, which in turn limits prospects for live work here.

It also makes it difficult to get signed by a label here, particularly with the commercial dominance of fusion artists and now the arrival of the neo-traditionalist brigade. With its extensive roster of highly regarded American jazz artists, Black Saint/Soul Note repeatedly won the Downbeat magazine Critics Poll as best jazz labels during the ‘80s, but it still lost its distribution deal with Polygram two years ago.

Even the recent surge of signings by American labels is deceptive.

“The A&M; series is like a throwback because there’s no youth in that,” said John Snyder, who produced the label’s “Modern Jazz Masters” series. “It’s like the avant-garde of different periods so it’s (paying) historical respect in a way. We assume there are people now who need that kind of encouragement so they can be modern music masters in 20 years.

“But name me somebody who’s thinking that far in advance. All the encouragement from the record companies and the critics has been, ‘Let’s hear this again.’ ”

If the American scene for avant-garde jazz is generally discouraging, the climate in Los Angeles is even bleaker.

The city has contributed a number of notable figures to the avant-garde realm--from Eric Dolphy and Don Cherry in the ‘50s to James Newton and Arthur Blythe in the ‘70s. Such residents as clarinetist John Carter, saxophonist Vinny Golia, cornetist Bobby Bradford and Tapscott regularly appear at European jazz festivals. Trombonists Michael Vlatkovich and John Rapson, the group Quartet Music and guitarist Nels Cline, among others, play music rooted in jazz improvisation that falls between the category cracks.

“Being an avant-garde jazz guy still has the stigma of having involved a bunch of screaming guys who had no technical ability,” said Golia. “I think of what we do--John Carter, James Newton, myself and a few other people around town--as contemporary American improvised music, because we’re coming from a jazz tradition but playing modern music that involves world cultures and a lot of contemporary classical technical ability.

But most Southern California jazz venues favor fusion or mainstream sounds. That creates a classic Catch-22 situation--local artists can’t get enough gigs to build a large enough following to persuade a club owner they can draw enough people to be offered a gig.

“In Los Angeles,” said Golia, “if you do go anywhere near the edge, the only time you get to work is when somebody wants to have you included as an oddity, part of a festival to show that this city has these striking artists. “

Said Nels Cline: “I think Quartet Music and maybe even my trio would have had greater appreciation in the mid-’70s. My trio couldn’t work in a jazz room because the music is too multifaceted. It’s the kind of music that is certainly performed at the Knitting Factory but I don’t know what to do with it here.”

Catalina’s has been the only club recently to present leading avant-garde artists--most of them New York-based--and owner Catalina Popescu maintained there is a substantial audience for the music. McCabe’s has presented occasional concerts and the Southern California Institute of Architecture in Santa Monica staged a five-concert series that ended in June.

The lack of performing opportunities and hometown media exposure can put Los Angeles artists at a disadvantage in competing for European gigs against better-known, New York-based artists. Recording opportunities have also been limited--Cline released an album through Germany’s Enja label and his brother Alex’s first album just came out on ECM. Switzerland’s hat Hut label released Bobby Bradford’s potent “Comin’ On” CD--recorded live at Catalina’s--and plans to issue a Horace Tapscott performance recorded at the club later this year.

Golia opted for the home-grown route by starting the Nine Winds label in 1977, initially to document his own music. Now the roster includes a variety of West Coast musicians and, following its planned dozen releases this year, the catalogue will number 40 titles.

But don’t expect the career obstacles to force these artists to back off from their musical direction.

“There are times when you allow yourself to play the music and the music lets you go,” said pianist Tapscott. “It takes you with it wherever it goes and that might lead you into the outside realm of the sound. If your hearing carries you to those limits, that’s where you should be going.”

Said Golia: “When I first started to play, I tried to force things. As I got more comfortable with my own technique and sound--even though you’re always looking for this other sound--the more I was led through this path that seemed to be more challenging to the players and listeners than when I was forcing the issue.

“All you have to do is follow what your inner voice tells you. Once you start searching for the spiritual quality and try to give any depth to your music, that puts you out there on the edge faster than you can believe. That’s the true essence of the music--that’s what makes it truly jazz and truly improvised.”