Eric Dolphy

Along with Coltrane and Coleman, Eric Dolphy played a significant role in influencing the development of the avant-garde in jazz in the late 1950s and early 1960s. He featured on Coleman’s seminal Free Jazz from 1960, and toured and recorded extensively with both Mingus and Coltrane. He developed a style of playing that was wholly his own, characterised by wide interval leaps and unorthodox note-to-chord relationships and played a leading role in extending the range of the alto saxophone by at least an octave.