Critical reception for the album was highly positive: it figured at or near the top of virtually every jazz magazine poll at the end of 2006, including Downbeat and JazzTimes.

John Fordham of The Guardian stated "At 76, sax revolutionary Coleman retains much of his old capricious energy - his whooping runs, long high notes, quivering tone and casual, spiralling descents still sound fresh, and a pin-sharp recording emphasises it.

Fast, slithering bowed passages cross the second bassist's rolling pizzicato freewalk, while snare-drum patterns and rimshots snap at the heels of vivacious sax figures.

But if Sound Grammar, recorded live in Germany, doesn't exactly match the excitement of being there, it does clear up the acoustic fog of the big halls in which Coleman usually performs.

Although Wynton Marsalis won a Pulitzer in 1997 for Blood on the Fields, an oratorio on slavery, Sound Grammar is the first jazz work to earn the award.