The Avant-Garde is an album credited to jazz musicians John Coltrane and Don Cherry that was released in 1966 by Atlantic Records.

According to Claire O'Neal, author of Ornette Coleman, this song "pokes fun at traditional musical structure, featuring a tonal center that hides from the listener".

"[7] This new jazz composition by Coleman features surprising rhythmic accents, asymmetrical melodic phrases, and the incorporation of brass instruments and drums into the melody of the song.

Neither Cherry nor Coltrane makes any radical departures on this album; however, it's the ability of each to complement the other both in terms of modal style and -- perhaps more importantly -- texture that lends heavily to the success of these sides.

Cherry's brisk and somewhat nasal intonations on 'The Blessing' mimic those of Miles Davis, albeit with shorter flourishes and heavily improvised lines.

"[2] Writing for the BBC, Peter Marsh suggested that Coltrane was "not entirely at home with Coleman or Cherry's vision", and stated: "The trumpeter is predictably mercurial, firing off staccato bursts of melody that change horses in midstream; his solos are kept short, while the saxophonist was (later at least) famed for his marathon improvisations.

Coltrane in 1960 was still very much under the sway of Prestige jam-session rules, wherein solo statements were made in a form as strictly organized as a university debate.

And after doing so..., he brings the band around to his way of thinking with a version of 'Bemsha Swing,' a tune he'd probably played dozens of times with Monk himself, three years earlier.