PULLING A PULITZER

posted by James Reel

    This week’s award of the annual Pulitzer Prize for music to avant-garde jazz musician Ornette Coleman will surely spur a lot of blather about how, for better and worse, the Pulitzer has finally broken its classical chains. But really, nothing has changed. There’s a long, though occasionally interrupted, tradition of the Pulitzer honoring music that very few people truly enjoy listening to, and in that regard Ornette Coleman is a traditional choice.