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Free jazz legend and icon of the avant-garde Ornette Coleman became the 16th director of Meltdown, using his curatorship to provide a platform for avantrockers, jazz and world music artists alike - giving free reign to reinvention, improvisation and the collaborative concerts Meltdown is renowned for.

Texan-born Coleman is a multi-instrumentalist and gave birth to the free jazz movement with the release of his classic album The Shape Of Jazz To Come on Atlantic records in 1959, winning him fans including Leonard Bernstein and Virgil Thomson. His reputation as an avant-garde genius was sealed with 1960’s Free Jazz: A Collective Improvisation, a 40-minute long, uninterrupted improvised piece.

While reinventing jazz music, Coleman always proved he was no jazz purist, collaborating with musicians including the Grateful Dead’s Jerry Garcia and legendary guitarist Pat Metheny, among others, during his lengthy career.

He has been the subject of film documentaries Who’s Crazy, looking at the Ornette Coleman trio recording the soundtrack of Who’s Crazy in 1966, and Made in America, a portrait of Coleman by the filmmaker Shirley Clarke. In 2007 he was recognised with a Grammy Award for lifetime achievement.

Artists who appeared in Ornette Coleman’s Meltdown included: Yoko Ono Plastic Ono Band, Sean Lennon, Cornelius, Moby, The Roots, The Master Musicians of Jajouka and Bachir Attar, Patti Smith, The Silver Mount Zion Memorial Orchestra, David Murray, Gwo-Ka Masters, Jamaaladeen Tacuma, Baaba Maal, Yo La Tengo, Bobby McFerrin, Charlie Haden’s Liberation Music Orchestra, Carla Bley, Robert Wyatt and The Bad Plus. Coleman also appeared performing works from The Shape Of Jazz To come.