A luminous, paradigm-shifting presence in free jazz and avant-garde music for nearly 60 years, alto saxophonist and composer Ornette Coleman died today at age 85 from cardiac arrest, according to the New York Times.

He is revered for groundbreaking records like Something Else!!! and The Shape of Jazz to Come and his concept of harmolodics, which, in Coleman's words, are where "harmony, melody, speed, rhythm, time, and phrases all have equal position in the results that come from the placing and spacing of ideas." Besides his prolific career as a band leader, Coleman ventured outside of jazz to collaborate with Master Musicians of Jajouka on Dancing in Your Head, Yoko Ono on Yoko Ono/Plastic Ono Band, Lou Reed on The Raven, and joined the Grateful Dead onstage twice in 1993.

My first encounter with Coleman's music was 1979's Of Human Feelings, which blew my then-post-punk-obsessed mind with its five-dimensional jazz funk. Every second radiated kinetic, chaotic inspiration. From there, I moved back to some of his older titles and tried to come to grips with their complex, ahead-of-their-time moves, and their joyous inversions of familiar jazz tropes. I still have much work to do with Coleman's catalog (as do most of us), and I'm afraid it will take several lifetimes to absorb it all properly. But what a rewarding way to spend one's time.

In a Wall Street Journal interview, saxophonist Sonny Rollins said of Coleman, "It takes enormous courage to play music that many people might not like and to stick with it, no matter what. In this regard, Ornette made a great contribution that freed a lot of artists to go further and look deeper inside themselves.”