The Loft jazz scene was a cultural phenomenon that occurred in New York City

New York City

New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

 during the mid-1970s, at venues such as Environ

Environ (Loft)

Environ was a performance space that was influential during the Loft Jazz scene of the mid-1970s in NYC. It was located on Broadway in SOHO and close to two other noted Loft Jazz venues: RivBea and Ali's Alley. Environ was established by Chris Brubeck and Danny Brubeck sons and band mates of noted...

, Ali's Alley, and Studio Rivbea

Studio Rivbea

Studio Rivbea was a jazz performance loft run by saxophonist Sam Rivers in the 1970s.It was located on Bond Street in Lower Manhattan and was originally opened as a public performance space as part of the first New York Musicians Festival in 1970...

, all in former industrial loft spaces in NYC's SOHO district. Hence, "Loft Jazz".

The scene was documented by Gary Giddins

Gary Giddins

Gary Giddins is an American jazz critic, author, and director, best known for his longtime work with The Village Voice. Born in Brooklyn, and raised on Long Island, Giddins graduated from Grinnell College, Iowa, in 1970...

, the late Robert Palmer (author/producer)

Robert Palmer (author/producer)

Robert Franklin Palmer Jr. was a 20th century American writer, musicologist, clarinetist, saxophonist, and blues producer...

, and Stanley Crouch

Stanley Crouch

Stanley Crouch is an American music and cultural critic, syndicated columnist, and novelist, perhaps best known for his jazz criticism, and his novel Don't the Moon Look Lonesome?- Biography :...

.

Many of the musicians featured were from Chicago and particularly the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians

Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians

The Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians is a non-profit organization, founded in Chicago, Illinois, United States, by pianist/composer Muhal Richard Abrams, pianist Jodie Christian, drummer Steve McCall, and composer Phil Cohran....

 (AACM) and St. Louis' Black Artists Group

Black Artists Group

The Black Artists Group was a multidisciplinary arts collective that existed in St. Louis, Missouri from 1968 to 1972.Members included saxophonists Julius Hemphill, Oliver Lake, J. D...

 (BAG). These included notables such as: The Art Ensemble of Chicago

Art Ensemble of Chicago

The Art Ensemble of Chicago is an avant-garde jazz ensemble that grew out of Chicago's AACM in the late 1960s. The group continues to tour and record through 2006, despite the deaths of two of the founding members....

, Muhal Richard Abrams

Muhal Richard Abrams

Muhal Richard Abrams is an American educator, administrator, composer, arranger, clarinetist, cellist, and jazz pianist in the Free jazz medium. Abrams compresses both contemporary and traditional ideas into lean, elegant pieces.- Biography :Abrams attended DuSable High School in Chicago...

, Anthony Braxton

Anthony Braxton

Anthony Braxton is an American composer, saxophonist, clarinettist, flautist, pianist, and philosopher. Braxton has released well over 100 albums since the 1960s...

, Dave Holland

Dave Holland

Dave Holland is an English jazz double bassist, composer and bandleader who has been performing and recording for five decades. He has lived in the United States for 40 years....

, Sam Rivers

Sam Rivers

Samuel Carthorne Rivers , is an American jazz musician and composer. He performs on soprano and tenor saxophones, bass clarinet, flute, harmonica and piano....

, Rashied Ali

Rashied Ali

Rashied Ali, born Robert Patterson was an American free jazz and avant-garde jazz drummer best known for playing with John Coltrane in the last years of Coltrane's life.-Biography:...

, Charles Tyler, Perry Robinson

Perry Robinson

Perry Morris Robinson is an American jazz clarinetist and composer. He is the son of the noted composer Earl Robinson. -Biography:...

, John Fischer

John Fischer (pianist)

John Fischer is a pianist, composer and visual artist. He is also a pioneer in the field of computer art. During the 1970s, during the loft jazz era in New York City, Fischer ran a performance loft and gallery known as Environ....

, Jeanne Lee

Jeanne Lee

Jeanne Lee was an American jazz singer, poet and composer. Best known for a wide range of vocal styles she mastered, Lee collaborated with numerous distinguished composers and performers which included Gunter Hampel, Ran Blake, Carla Bley, Anthony Braxton, Marion Brown, and many...

, Oliver Lake

Oliver Lake

Oliver Lake is an American jazz saxophonist, flutist, composer and poet. He is known mainly on alto saxophone but also performs on soprano saxophone and flute....

, Joseph Bowie

Joseph Bowie

Joseph Bowie is an American bandleader, trombonist, and founder of the seminal jazz fusion band, Defunkt. The group has been blending jazz with funk and punk music for more than three consecutive decades....

, Keshavan Maslak

Keshavan Maslak

Keshavan Maslak, who also performs under the stage name Kenny Millions is an American jazz multi-instrumentalist, avant-garde performance artist, poet and restaurateur.-Biography:...

, Hamiett Bluiett, Arthur Blythe

Arthur Blythe

Arthur Blythe is an American jazz alto saxophonist and composer. His stylistic voice has a distinct vibrato and he plays within the post-bop subgenre of jazz.- Biography :...

, Chico Freeman

Chico Freeman

Chico Freeman is a modern jazz tenor saxophonist and trumpeter and son of jazz saxophonist Von Freeman...

, David Murray

David Murray (jazz musician)

David Murray is an American jazz musician. Murray plays mainly tenor saxophone and sometimes bass clarinet. He has recorded prolifically for many record labels since the mid-1970s.-Biography:...

, Olu Dara

Olu Dara

Olu Dara Jones is an American cornetist, guitarist and singer.-History:...

, Air

Air (jazz group)

Air was a free jazz trio founded in 1971 by saxophone player Henry Threadgill, double bassist Fred Hopkins and drummer Steve McCall. They combined radical free improvisation with a strong sense of tune and equal emphasis on each instrument in the group....

, the Revolutionary Ensemble

Revolutionary Ensemble

The Revolutionary Ensemble was a free jazz trio consisting of violinist Leroy Jenkins , bassist Sirone and percussionist/pianist Jerome Cooper ....

, and Anthony Davis

Anthony Davis (composer)

Anthony Davis, better known as Tony Davis , is an American composer, jazz pianist, and student of gamelan music.-Biography:...

.

Loft jazz was a continuation of the free jazz

Free jazz

Free jazz is an approach to jazz music that was first developed in the 1950s and 1960s. Though the music produced by free jazz pioneers varied widely, the common feature was a dissatisfaction with the limitations of bebop, hard bop, and modal jazz, which had developed in the 1940s and 1950s...

 and avant-garde jazz

Avant-garde jazz

Avant-garde jazz is a style of music and improvisation that combines avant-garde art music and composition with jazz. Avant-jazz often sounds very similar to free jazz, but differs in that, despite its distinct departure from traditional harmony, it has a predetermined structure over which ...

 traditions inaugurated by John Coltrane

John Coltrane

John William Coltrane was an American jazz saxophonist and composer. Working in the bebop and hard bop idioms early in his career, Coltrane helped pioneer the use of modes in jazz and later was at the forefront of free jazz...

, Ornette Coleman

Ornette Coleman

Ornette Coleman is an American saxophonist, violinist, trumpeter and composer. He was one of the major innovators of the free jazz movement of the 1960s....

, Albert Ayler

Albert Ayler

Albert Ayler was an American avant-garde jazz saxophonist, singer and composer.Ayler was among the most primal of the free jazz musicians of the 1960s; critic John Litweiler wrote that "never before or since has there been such naked aggression in jazz" He possessed a deep blistering tone—achieved...

, Pharaoh Sanders, and Sun Ra

Sun Ra

Sun Ra was a prolific jazz composer, bandleader, piano and synthesizer player, poet and philosopher known for his "cosmic philosophy," musical compositions and performances. He was born in Birmingham, Alabama...

.

Recordings

A series of five LPs was released on Casablanca Records

Casablanca Records

Casablanca Records was an American record label started by Neil Bogart, who partnered with Cecil Holmes, Larry Harris, and Buck Reingold in 1973, and based in Los Angeles. The label was formed after all of them had left Buddah Records and secured financing by Warner Bros. Records to start the venture...

 in 1976, documenting different sessions of Sam Rivers-hosted loft sessions. Portions of the sessions have been reissued variously on Alan Douglas

Alan Douglas (record producer)

Alan Douglas is an American record producer who has worked with Jimi Hendrix, Miles Davis, Lenny Bruce and the Last Poets. He runs his own record label, Douglas Records....

 Music and Knitting Factory

Knitting Factory

The Knitting Factory is a music venue and concert house with locations in Brooklyn, Boise, Reno, and Spokane. The club originally specialized in jazz and experimental music and has expanded to showcasing all genres of music, performing arts and comedy....

Records.

• Wildflowers: The New York Loft Jazz Sessions - Complete Knitting Factory 3037 (2000 reissue)