Reuben Jackson, archivist at the National Museum of American History, discusses Ornette Coleman. For both his musical virtuosity on alto saxophone and his compositions, Ornette Coleman is one of the major forces in American music in the late twentieth century. Like painter Jackson Pollock and writer Walt Whitman, who rejected traditional forms as too constrictive for human expression, Coleman broke with existing jazz diction, creating a raw sound that seemed to deliberately avoid the musical scale in favor of "playing in the cracks." Reuben Jackson, archivist at the National Museum of American History discussed this portrait of Ornette Coleman by Frederick J. Brown at a Face-to-Face portrait talk. The work is displayed on the museum's third floor, in the exhibition "20th Century Americans." Recorded at NPG, February 19, 2009. Image info: Thelonious Sphere Monk / Boris Chaliapin, 1964 / Oil on canvas / National Portrait Gallery, gift of Time magazine