[.ca] Beauty Is a Rare Thing

From Amazon.co.uk:
The opportunity to possess--in one convenient package--every recording Ornette Coleman made for Atlantic is an opportunity most fans of modern jazz would be hard pressed to turn down. (It must be noted, however, that many jazz fans would have a very easy time turning down anything Coleman recorded, thank you very much). But for Coleman fans, this collection is an embarrassment of riches. Arranged chronologically by recording date, the set collects music from 1959 to 1961, the period many consider Ornette's most vital. Included are sessions from Free Jazz, Ornette!, The Shape of Jazz to Come, Twins, The Art of the Improvisers, Change of the Century, To Whom Who Keeps a Record and This Is Our Music. As a bonus, producers have also included a handful of previously unreleased tracks. Packaged with gorgeous photos, terrific liner notes from Robert Palmer, as well as copious discographic information, Beauty is a terrific package. As for the music, the recordings are clean, with excellent stereo separation (usually featuring Coleman in one channel and pocket trumpeter Don Cherry in another). But what really sets this collection apart is how clearly the spirit of the music is visible. Beauty bristles with that coiled, edge- of-the-chair excitement that Coleman could so easily summon capture, and manipulate. And while Coleman's horn playing here is genuinely pulse-quickening and vital, what also emerges from this set is the strength of his band. While Coleman was tensed and ready to pounce, the more esoteric Cherry was able to float and drift with the currents of music's emotion. Behind them, bassist Charlie Haden and drummer Ed Blackwell could roar like an open-throttle race car or purr like an idling sedan. But no matter what speed, this is music that gives the listener the impression it is going somewhere. And, of course, for Ornette Coleman, the destination isn't the point, it's the journey. --S Duda

Amazon.com essential recording:
The opportunity to possess--in one convenient package--every recording Ornette Coleman made for Atlantic is an opportunity most fans of modern jazz would be hard pressed to turn down. (It must be noted, however, that many jazz fans would have a very easy time turning down anything Ornette recorded, thank you very much). But for Coleman fans, this collection is an embarrassment of riches. Arranged chronologically by recording date, the set collects music from 1959 to 1961, the period many consider Ornette's most vital. Included are sessions from Free Jazz, Ornette!, The Shape of Jazz to Come, Twins, The Art of the Improvisers, Change of the Century, To Whom Who Keeps a Record, and This Is Our Music. As a bonus, producers have also included a handful of previously unreleased tracks. Packaged with gorgeous photos, terrific liner notes from Robert Palmer, as well as copious discographic information, Beauty is a terrific package. As for the music, the recordings are clean, with excellent stereo separation (usually featuring Ornette in one channel and pocket trumpeter Don Cherry in another). But what really sets this collection apart is how clearly the spirit of the music is visible. Beauty bristles with that coiled, edge-of-the-chair excitement that Ornette could so easily summon, capture, and manipulate. And while Coleman's horn playing here is genuinely pulse-quickening and vital, what also emerges from this set is the strength of his band. While Ornette was tensed and ready to pounce, the more esoteric Cherry was able to float and drift with the currents of music's emotion. Behind them, bassist Charlie Haden and drummer Ed Blackwell could roar like an open-throttle race car or purr like an idling sedan. But no matter what speed, this is music that gives the listener the impression it is going somewhere. And, of course, for Ornette Coleman, the destination isn't the point, it's the journey. S. Duda

This is So GOOD!:
.and SO worth the price of admission. 6 CDs worth to be exact. Coleman's musical voice is so free and full of life! It really is beautiful.

The Rarest:
500 years from now, historians will look back on the tumultuous 20th century and ask, "Yeah, but did they accomplish anything?" My suspicion is, these recordings will be the answer. It's amazing that these recordings raised such a brouhaha in the early sixties. The handsome notes booklet includes both defenders and detractors quotes to give you the essence of the debate. My personal favorite is Miles very disparaging remark. But strip away the objections to free jazz, plastic altos, and off note phrasing and you are left with startling compositions, telepathic interaction, and the unique vision of a jazz giant who actually had the guts to improvise on the melody, rather than a bunch of chord changes. If that doesn't convince you, how about the fact that Ornette plays deep blues better than most bop musicians think they can. Beauty trully is a very, very rare thing, indeed.

I call it THE BRICK!:
...Here you have some of the greatest music that ever was or will be. I have already written more indepth reviews of individual albums contained here: Change of the Century, Free Jazz & The Shape Of The Jazz To Come, all essentials. But there's another 6 full albums included here as well as inexplicably previously unreleased gems like Revolving Doors. I'll admit I haven't listened to it all in 1 setting & probably some tracks hardly ever but if you're into the man, or indeed that thing called jazz in general, this box is the Bible. Unfortunately there are not alternate takes of favourites like Lonely Woman or Una Muy Bonita, although some tracks with completely different titles have the same tune to introduce & conclude the song, just w/ totally different solos in between \oLittle Symphony & The Tribes of New York, I think\c. I know the curious should just get TSOJTC or something instead of forking out for this, but eventually you will succumb so if you can afford it I recommend it, the only problem being everything in chronological session order rather than the order on the albums but the detailed booklet tells you what's what as well as a good bio, photos & quotes. These 6 CDs were all recorded in just 2 years, which is astounding considering the amount of quality material & the shift to further abstraction \oalthough I must admit I prefer the classic sound & rarely visit discs 5 & 6\c. But beauty indeed is quite present here, & we should thank Ornette, Don, Charlie, Billy, Ed & co for this life-affirming genius music. Other box sets I recommend are Peel Slowly & See + Grow Fins.

God Bless The Child That's Got His Own:
This box set is every bit as important as you might think, but whether Coleman's classic Atlantic records (and there are many phases, all of which are well-documented for the initiatable) were intended to be or have been particularly *seminal* is an open question. The idea of "free jazz" captured the mind of the aesthetic avant-garde in the 60's (the reality of themeless improvisation having preceded it by many decades, as careful hands will tell you) and has not yet let go, but perhaps it was never holding too tight: even those as close to Coleman's total output as to be considered "revivalists" (James Chance, John Zorn) are really quite distant from his aesthetic and signify somewhat other impulses. Is this to be rued? No, as statements of artistic independence these sessions have few equals: for example, as far as I can tell the sequencing of the original records was an idea which turned into a concept. Furthermore, the textual (and other) material provided by Coleman in liner notes (and cover art, which is sadly minimized for the purpose of Rhinoization -- the visual layout of *This Is Our Music* is a miracle of demotic modernism) indicates he's done all the thinking anybody needed to do about this music, thank you very much. Which means, honestly, that's there's really not too much left for you to do except your own thing: but what has directly eventuated from Coleman's music has suffered a bit as a result of the model's total conceptualization. But what to do about this? Certainly not revivalism, and the hand that harms is the hand that heals in this particular case -- this stands as a anticipatory rebuke of the Hilton Kramer forum convincing enough for essential purposes. And at these prices (i.e., well within the reach of a local library) can the would-be innovator really afford not to get acquainted with it?

A major document:
This set is one of the most important reissues of the 1990s, the beneficiary of increasingly intelligent reissue policies by the major record companies. _Beauty Is a Rare Thing_ finally does justice to Coleman's principal body of work, recorded for Atlantic from 1959 to 1961. CD reissues of the original albums have flitted in & out of existence with maddening unpredictability over the years, so this set is the only easy way to obtain the whole body of work. In addition it has many previously unreleased tracks. Perhaps it's superfluous to comment closely on the music inside. I once commented to a friend that it's music that seems to me strikingly _complete_. That perception is hard to unpack entirely, perhaps, but speaks of how the music seems both coherent & integral & yet surprising & raw after even many listens. While certainly it's a long distance from the aggressive "energy" playing of the mid-1960s of Coltrane, Sanders & c, every time I listen to Coleman's music it still sounds almost alien, with a strangeness at its heart that is hard to dispel. The first two discs, _The Shape of Jazz to Come_ & _Change of the Century_, were recorded with the Cherry/Haden/Higgins band in 1959; they remain his most popular quartet discs, & contain most of his best-known compositions--"Ramblin'", "Una Muy Bonita" & the immortal "Lonely Woman". These three tracks are exemplary showcases for the brilliance of Charlie Haden: "Ramblin'" for instance is a classic dissection of the blues, where Haden ignores the codified 12-bar form but instead marks the divisions between choruses by switching between rhythmic stops & a walking line. "Lonely Woman" is an intricate exercise in multiple rhythmic layers, a desolate ballad performed by the horns, who float over Haden's out-of-tempo stops (which sonds like they're coming from some middle-eastern instrument) & the unexpectedly fast & tense rhythms of Higgins' drums. Coleman may have arrived in New York with his concept fully formed, but his recordings are anything but static expositions of this concept, & the 3rd album, _This Is Our Music_, is already stranger & more alien than the previous recordings. The key to this is the replacement of Higgins with Ed Blackwell, a drummer who sounds unsettlingly different from any other drummer of the period. This date (actually three sessions from July & August 1960--the nearly 2 CDs' worth of tracks from this date, including 5 previously unreleased ones, are the key recoveries of this boxed set) is especially notable for his one quartet rendition of a standard, "Embraceable You"--one of those versions of a much-loved standard which is both a desecration & elevation, rather like Charlie Parker's "All the Things You Are" or Coltrane's "My Favourite Things". The set presents the next bit of material out of order. Disc six contains two "third-stream" scores by Gunther Schuller from December 19th & 20th of 1960, performed by a large ensemble including a stirng quartet, Jim Hall on guitar & Bill Evans on piano. The first is "Abstraction", a palindromic musical construct which cracks open to yield an acappella Coleman solo; the 2nd is a 15-minute set of variations on Monk's "Criss Cross". These two tracks form a suggestive context for the date recorded the next day (the 21st), which is Coleman's own effort at a large-scale music: _Free Jazz_ (on disc 4). This features a double quartet: Coleman, Cherry, Dolphy, Hubbard, La Faro, Haden, Blackwell, Higgins. It's hard to comment on this, some of the most difficult music Coleman recorded in his career. Even those who find it hard going should persist--not least because of the conclusion, one of the best moments in recorded jazz: the alternate bass solos & drum solos remain unrivalled for vibrancy, colour & imagination. The increasing abstraction of Coleman's music at this point is marked by _Ornette!_, a quartet with Cherry, La Faro & Blackwell. By now the more obviously blues-based early music has been replaced by something much more oblique & enigmatic, a change felt both in La Faro's quizzical, unpredictable bass playing, & in Blackwell's prominence in the music. Though the music swings forcefully, both bass & drums often break from a conventional time-keeping role, & the music has a raw, almost primitive edge to it that wasn't as apparent with the warm-toned Haden & the sweet cymbal work of Higgins. "C. & D." is a drum feature, & Blackwell's performance sounds like something off an ethnographic recording, not a jazz disc. This is potent & disconcerting music, & it's fortunate that another 10-minute track has been rediscovered, the previously unknown "Proof Readers". The last music included here is _Ornette on Tenor_, which besides the change of the leader's instrument features a change of bassist--Jimmy Garrison, who didn't last much longer with the group (he famously quit onstage in frustration one night, & later that year began work with Coltrane). His driving, uncomplicated bass playing is appropriate to an album which emphasizes the R & B element in Coleman's music. In addition to the principal albums, this set includes the contents of several earlier albums that contained previously unused material from these sessions, _Twins_, _The Art of the Improvisers_, & _To Whom Who Keeps a Record_ (the last is very rare, a Japan-only release from 1975). The most important track among these is the "First Take" of _Free Jazz_ (half the length), though really all of the material is just as good as the original albums. This set is not the best way to begin acquaintance with the music--rather like Parker's infinite variations on the blues & "I Got Rhythm" when collected into a mammoth boxed set, the music here can seem too much of a piece to the uninitiated. But the more it's explored, the more this music seems almost limitless in its nuance & range.

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