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Ornette Coleman, free jazz pioneer who stuck to his principles

Saxophonist who felt unshackled by musical convention but never consistently explained his 'harmolodics' theory, was defiantly different to the end

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Ornette Coleman in 2006. Photo: AP
Ornette Coleman in 2006. Photo: AP
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Before his appearance during the 2008 Hong Kong Arts Festival, Ornette Coleman told the South he was "constantly trying to find a different idea for the same note".

"I think that's the only thing that makes you stand out as an individual - how you play that note. That's what marks me down and keeps me going," he said.

That quest kept him going - as an exploratory artist - from the high school band in which he played tenor saxophone in the 1940s, through the '50s and '60s innovations of the free jazz movement, of which he was the founding father, to his eventual acceptance as one of jazz's elder statesmen. He died from a heart attack at the age of 85 on June 11.

Like fellow saxophonists John Coltrane and Eric Dolphy, Coleman was a notably kind, gentle man whose music could provoke angry denunciations and even physical attacks.

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After one early gig in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, as a touring musician in an R&B band, he was assaulted by some members of an audience who hated his playing so much that as well as beating him up they destroyed his tenor saxophone.

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