A day for mourning the passing of Ornette Coleman whose death at 85 was announced earlier today. And a day to think about freedom and language, things that Coleman knew about and in both cases rewrote the rules of for jazz.

Synonymous with “free jazz” the style of often atonal, chaotic, raw and vital music that came out of the blues like Coleman himself, the title of an album of his, the Atlantic years were the first very controversial stopping-off point for innovation with a quartet featuring best of all the late Charlie Haden, Don Cherry and Billy Higgins or, swapping for Higgins, Ed Blackwell. It’s sobering to think that none of these players are no longer alive, Ornette the last to leave us.

When he went electric Coleman changed jazz again with his style usually known as harmolodics, a skirling no nonsense punkish sound with his band Prime Time that inspired both jazz musicians and the punk world as well as contemporary music.

I saw Coleman play a few times over the years, the last time during the South Bank festival Meltdown he curated peforming with two bassists and the omnipresent figure of his son Denardo who had played with him for many years before, since he was a small boy and who looked after him as his health faded in his latter years. The first time, again with Denardo in the band, years earlier in the 1990s when Coleman got back together with Don Cherry and toured all over the place. That was a thrill.

Few jazz records come close to The Shape of Jazz To Come. ‘Lonely Woman’ and ‘Peace’, above, are what Coleman will be most remembered for. Frank in their simplicity, revolutionary in their effect, power in their reach. Bands like Led Bib wouldn’t exist without Ornette Coleman’s music. John Zorn would sound different. The list goes on... and Coleman changed his collaborators too: the memorable collaboration with Pat Metheny on Song X is one great example of this.

A sad day. But a day also to celebrate yes freedom, the anarchy and artistry of Coleman’s sound and the language that he created that we would never have been able to hear if it had not been for the ache and the passion, the ancient and the modern in Coleman’s playing and vision.

Read Ben Ratliff’s obituary in The New York Times here