ORNETTE COLMAN: PULITZER

From www.npr.org:

Ornette Coleman Wins Music Pulitzer

Ornette Coleman

April 16, 2007 – Ornette Coleman has won the Pulitzer Prize for music with his recording Sound Grammar, a document of a 2005 concert recorded live in Italy.

Coleman’s music was not among the 140 music nominees. Pulitzer panelists used their prerogative to skirt traditional rules by purchasing the CD and nominating the 77-year-old jazz master. This is the first time a recording has won the music Pulitzer, and a first for purely improvised music.

The concert features an unorthodox line-up of instruments, including two double basses (one plucked, the other bowed), Coleman’s son Denardo on drums, and Coleman himself playing alto saxophone and trumpet.

Coleman has continued to shake up the jazz world ever since releasing his innovative recording The Shape of Jazz to Come in 1959.

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