[Review of] David G. Such. Avant-Garde Jazz Musicians: Performing Out There

The burgeoning scholarship on the avant-garde in jazz of the 1950s and 1960s still accounts for only a small number of scholarly jazz-related publications. Though the ascendance of interdisciplinary, cultural studies paradigms leave open many pathways to discussions of avant-garde jazz, David G. Such\u27s Avant-Garde Jazz Musicians incorporates little ofthe cultural criticism Ronald Radano offers in his equally new New Musical Figurations: Anthony Braxton’s Cultural Critique (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993). Such instead focuses multiply on what avant-garde musicians say about their music\u27s position a handful of topical devices which head chapters in the text. From considering Labels, an indispensable issue in music criticism -- since so much knowledge is vested in its nominal category -- Such discusses predecessors to the ”out jazz“ period from the mid-late 1950s onward, citing bebop\u27s revolutionary reputation and its figureheads as worthy precursors to such musicians as Cecil Taylor, Ornette Coleman, and many of the more recent player/composers whom Such interviews