Ornette Coleman wins award at Montreal jazz festival

Ornette Coleman, an American musician known as one of the greatest innovators in free jazz, has won the Miles Davis Award at the Montreal International Jazz Festival.

Coleman, 79, was given the award Thursday afternoon by Alain Simard, founder and president of the festival.

He performs Thursday evening at Thtre Maisonneuve in Montreal.

The Miles Davis Award has been given since 1994 to honour a great international jazz musician for the entire body of his or her work.

Coleman, a saxophonist, violinist, trumpeter and composer, has been enormously influential in the development of free jazz.

In the 1960s, he broke from the traditional jazz sound to create a new concept of jazz that "heeded neither chord nor measure" in its pursuit of melody, the jazz festival said in its citation.

He called this movement harmolodics but fans and followers called it free jazz, after his 1960 album Free Jazz.

This year marks the 50th anniversary of his revolutionary album, The Shape of Jazz To Come.

He has a Grammy Award for lifetime achievement and in 2007, his album SoundGrammar won a Pulitzer Prize for music.

Previous Miles Davis Award winners include McCoy Tyner, Mike Stern, Brad Mehldau, Dave Holland, Keith Jarrett and Chick Corea.