In the fall of 2023, a group of Santa Fe jazz players began doing sessions at Patrick Lysaght’s Entropy Gallery that were inspired by the ‘70s loft scene in NYC, where players would come together to do free improvisation in order to search out new musical territory. When I first met Patrick Lysaght and he told me about his Entropy Gallery, I told him of my fantasy to do loft style free jazz sessions at an art gallery. He immediately liked the idea, as he had a long history with free jazz as a sax player.

So we held the first session in his gallery, and I soon realized that there has been quite a history of free jazz in Santa Fe, but it appeared to me to be mostly underground. While I have seen an incredible amount of activity with bop and post bop jazz here as well as what I would call experimental music, there doesn’t seem to be a lot of performance from what I would call the avant garde jazz tradition. Hopefully the Avant Jazz Collective can help fill in this gap in the amazingly vibrant music scene in the Santa Fe / ABQ area.

I’ve given myself the title of Music Director, since the music director’s job in my mind is execute the vision of the artist, and my intention is to do the best I can to give all the artists of the collective what they are looking for from this group.
While we are all here first and foremost to create our shared vision of new and creative music, we also have an agenda to continue and hopefully expand the avant garde tradition in music and pass along what we have learned to younger players.

So I may get a bit wordy on this website at times, but if there is knowledge to be passed along, that’s how you do it.

Jim Goetsch
Music Director / AJC