Some of them followed Mr. Rivers's lead and opened their own lofts, and these informal venues became the crucibles in which the jazz avant-garde of the 1970's tested its ideas in public.

Mr. Shepp is dramatic and flamboyant, and as an early member of the jazz avant-garde of the 1960's, he made noise both politically and esthetically.

The series has also ignored the jazz avant-garde of the 1960's and 1970's.

"I was late on Hendrix because Hendrix was not marketed to Afro-Americans," said the trombonist Craig Harris, a longtime member of New York's jazz avant-garde.

It had to do with the notion that a pugnacious jazz avant-garde was being invited inside the gates of a dull and powerful establishment.

The Gold Sparkle Band has been in New York since the late 80's; it channels the East-Coast jazz avant-garde of the mid-1960's.

Mr. Gayle, who plays tenor saxophone, is an expressionist who draws his cues from the jazz avant-garde of the 1960's.

The Allmusic review by Brian Olewnick awarded the album 5 stars stating "Eternal Rhythm is Don Cherry's masterwork and one of the single finest recordings from the jazz avant-garde of the 1960s.

The jazz avant-garde has always been a multinational affair.

Mr. Lloyd tried to synthesize two streams of the early-60's jazz avant-garde: John Coltrane's ecstatic spirit and Eastern overtones and Ornette Coleman's rocketlike melodic declarations.