The New York loft jazz scene of the 1970s was a pivotal period for uncompromising, artist-produced work. Faced with a flagging jazz economy, a group of young avant-garde improvisers chose to eschew the commercial sphere and develop alternative venues in the abandoned factories and warehouses of Lower Manhattan. <I>Loft Jazz </I>provides the first book-length study of this period, tracing its history amid a series of overlapping discourses surrounding collectivism, urban renewal,...