While it's true this set has been given the highest rating AMG awards, it comes with a qualifier: the rating is for the music and the package, not necessarily the presentation.

Presentation is a compiler's nightmare in the case of artists like John Coltrane and Ornette Coleman, who recorded often and at different times and had most of their recordings issued from the wealth of material available at the time a record was needed rather than culling an album from a particular session.

Why is this a problem? It's twofold: First is that listeners got acquainted with recordings such as The Shape of Jazz to Come, This Is Our Music, Change of the Century, Twins, or any of the other four records Ornette Coleman released on Atlantic during that period.

The other is one of economics; for those collectors who believe in the integrity of the original albums, they need to own both those recordings and this set, since the box features one album that was only issued in Japan as well as six unreleased tunes and the three Coleman compositions that appeared on Gunther Schuller's Jazz Abstractions record.

Politically what's interesting about this box is that though the folks at Rhino and Atlantic essentially created a completely different document here, putting Coleman's music in a very different context than the way in which it was originally presented, his royalty rate was unchanged -- he refused to do any publicity for this set when it was issued as a result.

As for the plus side of such a collection, there is a certain satisfaction at hearing complete sessions in context.

That cannot be argued -- what is at stake is at what price to the original recorded presentations.

Enough complaining.

As for the music, as mentioned, the original eight albums Coleman recorded for Atlantic are here, in one form or another, in their entirety: Shape of Jazz to Come, Change of the Century, The Art of the Improvisers, Twins, This Is Our Music, Free Jazz, Ornette, and Ornette on Tenor, plus To Whom Keeps a Record, comprised of recordings dating from 1959 to 1960.

In fact all of the material here was recorded between 1959 and 1961.

Given that there is a total of six completely unreleased compositions as well as alternate takes and masters, this is a formidable mountain of material recorded with not only the classic quartet of Coleman, Don Cherry, Charlie Haden, and Billy Higgins, but also the large double quartet who produced the two-sided improvisation that is Free Jazz with personalities as diverse as Eric Dolphy, Freddie Hubbard, and Scott LaFaro, as well as Coleman, Cherry, Haden, and Ed Blackwell, who had replaced Higgins on the music for To Whom Keeps a Record and This Is Our Music -- though Higgins does play on Free Jazz.

Ornette Coleman

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1968 - 6 tracks

New York Is Now - Ornette Coleman

3.5 out of 5

$3.99 - $6.99

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2004 - 5 tracks

Ornette On Tenor - Ornette Coleman

7 out of 5

$3.99

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2011 - 4 tracks

At The Golden Circle, Stockholm Vol 2 - Ornette Coleman

4 out of 5

$1.99 - $2.99

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1996 - 14 tracks

Sound Museum (Three Women) - Ornette Coleman

3.25 out of 5

$4.99 - $7.99

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1961 - 4 tracks

Ornette! - Ornette Coleman

4 out of 5

$1.99 - $2.99

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1988 - 11 tracks

Virgin Beauty - Ornette Coleman

3.75 out of 5

$3.99 - $5.99

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