Tiny basement coffeehouses seeded avant-garde jazz collaborations in New York

Evidence

Snow had already finished shooting scenes of his two-dimensional star in three-dimensional New York when his friend, the poet Paul Haines, brought him one Sunday afternoon to the tiny Cellar Café, a basement coffeehouse on a residential block at 251 West Ninety-First Street. Composer-trumpeter Bill Dixon had organized a series of avant-garde jazz concerts, including his own combo, a Sun Ra sextet, and, newly returned from Europe, the saxophonist Albert Ayler. Soon after, Snow and Haines organized and recorded a stellar ensemble, augmenting Ayler’s current sidemen—trumpeter Don Cherry, drummer Sonny Murray, and bassist Gary Peacock—with the white trombonist Roswell Rudd and the Congolese-Danish tenor sax player John Tchicai. — J. Hoberman, Everything Is Now, 537