After moving to the East Coast with Don Cherry, Coleman took New York's burgeoning avantgarde scene by storm with a completely revolutionary form of music, that might as well have been invented by a classical or rock musician, so little it shared with jazz (other than the general principle that improvisation matters). Tomorrow Is The Question (march 1959), for a quartet with Don Cherry, bassist Percy Heath and drummer Shelly Manne, contained pieces such as Lorraine (the archetype of his slow ballads), Endless, Rejoicing, Giggin' (with a celebrated Cherry solo) and the eight-minute Turnabout that were emblematic of Coleman's wizardry at revolutionizing the traditional roles of musical elements.

Coleman's compositions on The Shape of Jazz to Come (may 1959), for a quartet with double bassist Charlie Haden, Don Cherry (on pocket trumpet) and Higgins, such as the funereal ballad Lonely Woman, Congeniality and the nine-minute Peace were even more notable for the way they messed with structure without losing an immediate appeal. In fact they sounded as catchy as anything done by pop singers. The idea was to make every member of the band a soloist equal to the others and to free the improvisation from musical constraints: basically, each individual was only bound to the mood of the other individuals, not to the technical aspects of the music that they were playing. Thus, for example, drums and bass hardly provided a true rhythm section. There was no piano to provide a chordal foundation. The music was more steeped in blues music than it appeared to be, but inevitably the method led to convoluted dynamics and countless detours that made it sound totally alien to the tradition of jazz (or any other form of music). By the same token, there was more tonal and chordal discipline than advertised, but Coleman's detours were so abrupt and profound that the detours (the process of instant composition) seemed to be the norm of his music. Even when they lasted only a few seconds, they could encompass dramatic explorations of microtones and pitches. Far from being mere theory, the whole irreverential apparatus of Coleman's techniques was about pathos. His own playing resembled more the contemporary style of theatrical recitation, with its sudden emotional outbursts, more than the traditional "narrative" styles of blues and jazz music. Coleman was a bold and extravagant (and prolific) composer but he actually composed for only one instrument, and in a rather instinctive way: inventing the polyphony was largely left to the other players. Coleman made Miles Davis' contemporary record Kind Of Blue look conservative.

Coleman, Cherry, Higgins and Haden continued their mission on Change of the Century (october 1960), via the relatively melodic Ramblin' and the chaotic Free and Change of the Century, and on This Is Our Music (august 1960), with Ed Blackwell replacing Higgins on drums, containing the pretty Kaleidoscope and Folk Tale, the violent Blues Connotation and the eerie seven-minute Beauty Is a Rare Thing.

Coleman's revolution climaxed with Free Jazz (december 1960), that contained a 37-minute collective improvisation (the longest jazz piece yet) for two reed/brass/bass/drums quartets: Coleman, Cherry, Haden and Higgins; bass clarinetist Eric Dolphy, trumpeter Freddie Hubbard, bassist Scott LaFaro and Blackwell. And the recording was no less important than the scoring: it took full advantage of stereophony, placing each quartet in one of the stereo channels. Again, his music was less revolutionary than it appeared to be: after all, Coleman's "free jazz" was largely composed, and the melodic elements (far from being inexistent) drew on bebop. It was, more appropriately, "compositional improvisation" (as Coleman himself defined it). But it was true that the roles of harmony and melody were somewhat confused by the loose organization of sound. That was going to remain a trademark of Coleman's music, one of the few constants of his career. Coleman's "free jazz" marked a return to the kind of collective improvisation of New Orleans' marching bands that marked the very beginning of jazz music, but now given a shot of dramatic tension. The improvisers were supposed to scream their angst and frustration with their struments, the interplay simply magnifying the sense of tragedy, in a fashion similar to expressionist theater.

Ornette (january 1961), with LaFaro on bass, contained four jams, and three were colossal: W.R.U. (16:25), C. & D. (13:10), R.P.D.D. (9:39). Ornette On Tenor (march 1961) found him playing the tenor, with Jimmy Garrison on bass. However, despite two lengthy jams (Cross Breeding and Mapa), it was a bit more trivial, as if Coleman was retreating to safer terrain. So much so that Jazz Abstractions (december 1960) contained two structured pieces, including Gunther Schuller's Abstraction for alto saxophone, string quartet, two basses, guitar, percussion (a premonition of Coleman's "third stream" period), and Variants on a Theme of Thelonious Monk (Criss Cross). The second life of Coleman ended abruptly in 1962, as if he had exhausted the possibilities of jazz music.

After a three-year hiatus, Coleman, who now also played the trumpet and the violin, returned with Chappaqua Suite (june 1965) in four movements for large ensemble and jazz quartet (Coleman, Pharoah Sanders on tenor, David Izenzon on bass, Charles Moffett on drums), with a sax-bass-drums trio (bassist David Izenzon and drummer Charles Moffett), best documented on Trio (november 1965) and on the soundtrack of the film Who's Crazy (november 1965), and with a trio (with Haden and his own underage son Denardo Coleman) that recorded The Empty Foxhole (september 1966) and Ornette at 12 (july 1968), with Bells And Chimes. By now, free jazz was only a memory.

But this third life of Coleman was mainly devoted to extended compositions for large ensemble, that included: Dedicated to Poets and Writers (1962) for string quartet, Forms and Sounds for woodwind quintet (1965), and Saints and Soldiers (1967) and Space Flight (1967) for symphony orchestra, a phase that culminated in the suite Skies of America (may 1972), originally scored for jazz ensemble and orchestra but first recorded as a concerto for orchestra (and revised in 1983). This complex work finally found a way to link free jazz and John Cage's aleatory music. The Artist in America was emblematic of Coleman's "harmolodic" orchestration, "based on the four clefs bass, treble, tenor and alto... to modulate in range without changing keys" (violins in the treble, violas in the alto, cellos in the tenor, basses in the bass), but also pitting two percussionists against each other on the two stereo channels (an improvising tympanist against a time-keeping drummer) and leaving room for Coleman's soaring solo.

The transition to a new phase was signaled by recordings that did not quite fit with anything Coleman had done before. New York Is Now (may 1968) and Love Call (same session), with ex-Coltrane sidemen Jimmy Garrison and Elvin Jones as well as tenorist Dewey Redman, sounded like a melodic divertissment, entertaining traditionalists with the 14-minute The Garden of Souls (on New York Is Now) and the ten-minute Airborne (on Love Call).

Science Fiction (september 1971) introduced an explosive sound ancored to a volcanic rhythm section (Haden, Higgins and Blackwell) that seemed sworn to maximizing the mayhem. Coleman toyed with several different settings in Street Woman and Civilization Day (for the classic quartet of Haden, Higgins and Don Cherry), Law Years and The Jungle Is a Skyscraper (for a quintet with Haden, Blackwell, Redman and trumpeter Bobby Bradford), Rock the Clock (for septet, with Redman on an Arabic reed instrument and Haden on wah-wah bass, both Blackwell and Higgins on drums, and plus Indian vocalist Asha Puthli), and Science Fiction (with samples of crying baby and spoken-word recitation).

A brief reunion with Don Cherry yielded one of Coleman's most heartfelt compositions, Broken Shadows (march 1969).

During this period (1973) he also jammed with tribal musicians of Morocco on traditional instruments (plus Robert Palmer on clarinet and flute), although only four minutes of it were released three years later, titled Midnight Sunrise.

Coleman reinvented himself a fourth time in 1975, when he formed Prime Time, a quintet of alto saxophone (sometimes also violin and trumpet), two electric guitars, an electric bassist and a drummer (and later a second drummer, to create a "double quartet" of two guitars, two bassists, two drummers and his alto) devoted to a dense and loud stylistic jungle that ran the gamut from blues, funk, jazz and rock to dissonant music. Basically he entered the disco with the same nonchalance with which he had entered the avantgarde clubs 15 years earlier, and with the same determination to wreak havoc.

On one hand Coleman reacted to the increasing commercial turn that jazz-rock had taken, while on the other he was simply influenced by the ideas of a friend, guitarist James "Blood" Ulmer.

The highlight of Dancing in Your Head (december 1976) was a devastating 26-minute Theme From a Symphony, propelled by manic drummer Ronald Shannon Jackson and ripped apart by the twin-guitar assault of Charles Ellerbee and Bern Nix. Body Meta (december 1976) contained five eight/nine-minute tracks that now relied on an even funkier rhythm section (Jackson and bassist Jamaaladeen Tacuma). Coleman was reborn as a king of rocking and danceable music, although he hardly indulged in the format, repeating it only on Of Human Feelings (april 1979).

The great technical innovation of this period was a vaguely-defined "harmolodics", which basically stood for a hodgepodge of intricate polyrhythms, complex melodies and polytonal textures.

After a long hiatus, Coleman consolidated the "double quartet" line-up of Prime Time (two guitars, two basses, two drums plus Coleman on alto, trumpet and violin) for Opening the Caravan of Dreams (september 1983), for one half of the double album In All Languages (february 1987), the other half being a reunion with Coleman's original quartet (Cherry, Haden, Higgins), and for Virgin Beauty (february 1987).

However, Coleman remained more of a European composer than most jazz musicians had been, as further documented by Time Design (1983) for amplified string quartet and electric drum set, The Sacred Mind of Johnny Dolphin (1984) for chamber ensemble, Notes Talking (1986) for solo mandolin, Trinity (1986) for solo violin, In Honor of NASA and Planetary Soloist (1986) for oboe, English horn, mukhavina and string quartet, etc.

In the meantime he had recorded Soapsuds Soapsuds (january 1977) with Charlie Haden and Song X (december 1985) with guitarist Pat Metheny.

Prime Time was finally reformed for Tone Dialing (november 1995), replacing one drummer with a tabla player and adding a keyboardist. His tardive interest in keyboards was visible also on the two twin albums recorded with Geri Allen, notably Three Women (1994).

The live Sound Grammar (2006) for a quartet with two acoustic basses showed the old master still at the peak of his talent.

Coleman was also quite unique among jazz musicians of his generation because he seldom performed as a side-man on other musicians' recordings.

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