He was even assaulted for this, and once had his sax destroyed as well by irate listeners. However, he pressed on. He reminded me of another dead rebel, comedian Bill Hicks. Both he and Coleman did what they needed to do onstage, and either you were down with that or you could leave. Or the artist would be happy to fight you. Comedy and music are two of the few remaining entertainment genres in which you risk getting the shit kicked out of you in the course of a night's work.
He believed one could erase, alter, ignore, fuse, mutate, spindle, mutilate, enshrine, and/or make love to all the structures and habits of all music up to that point and beyond, all at the same time. Starting with a blank conceptual slate, he cut to the chase, a musical mad scientist, a raging blank-rhyme poet, letting the music take him where it would and teaching an entire generation to do the same. AND IT'S BEAUTIFUL, full of his intelligence and feeling.
He somehow knew that the act of committing is powerful in and of itself. He somehow knew that trusting whatever sounds come out is the fantastic spontaneous heartbeat of art. Like Charles Ives, he heard music where others denied it. He heard it and made it everywhere, in every setting, with every kind of player.
He constantly innovated, trying new things with hundreds of collaborators. That is music is so engaging is a tribute to his innate musicianship -- others might make a self-indulgent mess of free jazz, but Coleman could always find the dynamic, listenable heart of any piece and send that understanding to the audience. Like a contemporary visionary, Sun Ra, he is still way ahead of his time.