Legendary Jazz saxophonist Ornette Coleman, the visionary and composer who pioneered “free jazz” has died.
Publicist Ken Weinstein says Coleman died on Thursday at 1 a.m. in Manhattan.
He was 85.
The Texas-born Coleman was only the second jazz artist to win the Pulitzer in music when he was honored for his 2006 album “Sound Grammar.”
Coleman is regarded as one of the greatest innovators in jazz history along with Louis Armstrong and Charlie Parker.
In the late 1950s, he originated free jazz, abandoning the musical convention of bebop jazz of improvising off the underlying chord changes.
Coleman’s approach explored improvisation through melody; deriving from a uniquely free interaction between the musicians, without being tethered to rigid metric or harmonic structure.
