Kwami Coleman
What's So "Free" About Free Jazz?
Friday, November 6, 1:30 PM
Frick Fine Arts Auditorium
Part of the 2026-27 Visiting Scholar Series
Kwami Coleman is a musicologist, music creator, and an associate professor at the Gallatin School of Individualized Study, New York University. He researches and writes on improvised and experimental music, American music history, jazz history, music and the African Diaspora, music's political economy, music aesthetics, technology,
Abstract: Free jazz, the (sub-)genre of the United States' indigenous improvised music tradition, forged in the radical tumult of the 1960s, often evades specific definition. Assumptions and misconceptions about what the artists in question were pursuing—creatively, and even politically—underpinned reactions to new music at its inception, yet musicians, music scholars and educators today still may not grasp fully the sound, methods, and motivations behind free jazz. Similarly, jazz specialists may not be familiar with the aesthetics of free improvisation as practiced in that historical period, and how improvising musicians employ these techniques today in the twenty-first century.
Pitt Jazz Week Schedule
Saturday, November 7
DAYTIME SEMINARS:
10:00am – Greg Lewis and Raina Welch
Afro American Music Institute
7131 Hamilton Ave., Homewood
1:00pm – Workshop with Organist Ben Paterson
Bellefield Hall Auditorium
2:00pm – Interview with Bobby Broom
Bellefield Hall, Room 205
3:00pm – Guitar Masterclass with Peter Bernstein
Bellefield Hall, Room 205
56th Annual Pitt Jazz Concert
"Organ Summit"
Saturday, November 7th, 2026 @ 8:00pm
Bellefield Hall Auditorium
315 S. Bellefield Avenue, Pittsburgh PA 15260
PURCHASE TICKETS HERE
Organ Summit - 56TH ANNUAL PITT JAZZ SEMINAR & CONCERT - Bellefield Hall, Oakland
FIRST SET
Chad Taylor, drums; Greg Lewis, organ; John Shannon, guitar; Raina Welch, vocals; Yoko Suzuki, saxophone
SECOND SET
Bobby Broom, guitar; Peter Bernstein, guitar; Kobie Watkins, drums; Ben Paterson, organ