Ornette Coleman, Jazz Iconoclast, Dies At 85\

Ornette Coleman, the American saxophonist and composer who liberated jazz from conventional harmony, tonality, structure and expectation, died early on Thursday of cardiac arrest in Manhattan. He was 85.

Coleman was an American icon and iconoclast — a self-taught musician born poor and fatherless in Fort Worth, Texas, in 1930, who went on to win the Pulitzer Prize, the Japanese Praemium Imperiale, two Guggenheims, a MacArthur, honorary doctorates and a National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Master honor.

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