Ornette Coleman changed jazz by challenging the notion of what it is as music, and as life. Now 81, he talks to Kevin Le Gendre prior to arriving in London in November for a rare concert to close this year’s London Jazz Festival.

A copy of the American Bill Of Rights with its edge curled upwards by a creeping flame is an image that might raise an eyebrow among more than one elected official in governments on either side of the Atlantic. Torching the amendments that outlaw the abridging of free speech, allow the right of people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers and effects, and, of course, bear arms, is a most molotov provocation. Such is the sleeve of Ornette Coleman’s 1972 album, Crisis. Even viewed through a pre-9/11 prism, the sight of the U.S constitution blackened by fire is one of the most audacious statements one could make, stopping short of striking a match under the stars and stripes.

Yet although the combination of jacket and music conveyed profound dissent at western iniquity and imperialism, none more so than on a piece such as ‘Trouble In The East’, the album is essentially humanist, the work of a man who, beyond any facile flower child clichés, seemed genuinely beholden to the idea of pacifism and altruism. Just a few years before the release of Crisis, Coleman recorded Denardo At 12, the debut of his little drummer boy son in the company of seasoned men, tenor saxophonist Dewey Redman and bassist Charlie Haden.

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