JAZZ SPOTLIGHT

ORNETTE COLEMAN

“Beauty Is a Rare Thing”

Rhino/Atlantic

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This six-CD boxed set chronicles Coleman’s Atlantic tenure, from the late ‘50s to the mid-’70s. Included are such albums as “The Shape of Jazz to Come,” “Free Jazz,” “Ornette on Tenor” and “The Art of the Improvisers,” along with six previously unreleased tracks. (Many other hours of Coleman tapes for Atlantic were destroyed in a 1976 warehouse fire.)

Although others had earlier advocated drastic alterations in jazz methodology, Coleman became the public flashpoint for the new, iconoclastic improvisational sensibilities that were to emerge in the 1960s. Still, his work from the period is what too few listeners then realized--”free” soloing strongly rooted in blues and be-bop.

Coleman’s decision to play beyond the limits of bar lines and harmonic restrictions--brilliantly displayed in works such as “Congeniality,” “Una Muy Bonita” and “Free” (to name only a few)--employed the same kind of repeated phrases favored by Charlie Parker. Coleman may have been a radical, but he had no desire to tear down the walls of the past. Like Bird, he soared into his own unique orbit, but as far out as he sometimes reached, he always was buoyed by the spirit and the substance of his jazz predecessors.

Rhino’s digital remastering of the original analog tapes is generally unobtrusive, and the set includes a 72-page booklet with detailed track listings, recording dates and master numbers. All in all, a superb and absolutely essential package.

Albums are rated on a scale of one star (poor) to four stars (excellent). Five star ratings are reserved for classic reissues.