Personnel: Ornette Coleman (alto & tenor saxophones), Eric Dolphy (alto saxophone, flute, bass clarinet), Don Cherry (pocket trumpet, cornet), Freddie Hubbard (trumpet), Robert DiDomenica (flute), The Contemporary String Quartet (strings), Eddie Costa (vibraphone), Bill Evans (piano), Jim Hall (guitar), Charlie Haden, Scott LaFaro, Jimmy Garrison, Alvin Brehm, George Duvivier (acoustic bass), Billy Higgins, Ed Blackwell, Sticks Evans (drums).

Producers: Neshui Ertegun (disc 1-5, all tracks; disc 6, track 1-6); Neshui Ertegun, John Lewis (disc 6, track 7-8).

Compilation producer: Yves Beauvais.

Recorded at Radio Recorders, Hollywood, California from May to October, 1959; Atlantic Recording Studios, New York City from July, 1960 to March, 1961; and A&R Studios, New York City in December, 1960. Includes liner notes by Ornette Coleman, Don Cherry, Robert Palmer and Yves Beauvais.

Digitally remastered by Stephen Innocenzi (1993, Atlantic Studios, New York).

All songs written by Ornette Coleman except "Embraceable You" (George Gershwin/Ira Gershwin), "Abstraction" and "Variants On A Theme Of Thelonius Monk" (Gunther Schuller).

BEAUTY IS A RARE THING was nominated for Best Album Notes in the 37th Annual Grammy Awards.

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 'n' 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.

The progression of the recording sessions musically is one of dynamics, color, and, with the addition of Blackwell, firepower. As the listener moves from the first session that would become most of The Shape of Jazz to Come, listeners can hear how the interplay between Cherry and Coleman works lyrically not so much as a system, but as system of the creation of melody from dead fragments of harmony, thereby creating a harmonic sensibility that cares not for changes and chord progressions, but for the progression of music itself in the context of a quartet. From the sharp edges on "Focus on Sanity," through "Peace" and "Congeniality," through "Lonely Woman," Coleman's approach to harmony was one of disparate yet wholly compatible elements. This is the story as the sessions unfold, one kind of lyricism evolving into itself more fully and completely with time. On Change of the Century, Twins, and This Is Our Music, Coleman shifts his emphasis slightly, adding depth and dimension and the creation of melody that comes out of the blues as direct and simply stated as possible. By the time LaFaro enters the picture on Free Jazz and Art of the Improvisers, melody has multiplied and divided itself into essence, and essence becomes an exponential force in the creation of a new musical syntax. The recordings from 1960 and 1961, along with the unreleased masters and alternates, all show Coleman fully in possession of his muse. The trek of musicians through the band -- like Jimmy Garrison and Eric Dolphy, as well as people like Jim Hall and Bill Evans where Coleman appeared in Gunther Schuller's experiments -- all reveal that from The Shape of Jazz to Come through On Tenor, Coleman was trying to put across the fully developed picture of his musical theory of the time. And unlike most, he completely succeeded. Even on the unreleased compositions, such as the flyaway storm of "Revolving Doors" or "PROOF Readers" or the slippery blues of "The Tribes of New York," Coleman took the open-door approach and let everything in -- he didn't necessarily let it all out. The package itself is, as are all Rhino boxes, handsome and original; there are three double-CD sleeves that all slip into a half box, which slips, reversed, into the whole box. There is a 68-page booklet with a ton of photographs, complete session notes, and liners by Coleman (disappointingly brief, but he was pissed off at the label), a fantastic essay by the late Robert Palmer, recollections by all the musicians, and quotes from Coleman from interviews given through the decades. The sound is wonderful and the mastering job superb. In all -- aside from the breach of pop culture's own historical context, which is at least an alternate reality -- this is, along with John Coltrane's Atlantic set and the Miles and Coltrane box, one of the most essential jazz CD purchases. ~ Thom Jurek

BEAUTY IS A RARE THING contains Ornette Coleman's entire surviving recorded output for the Atlantic label from 1959-1961 (a number of other sessions were recorded, but they were destroyed, along with countless other priceless Atlantic masters, in their infamous warehouse fire of the mid-1970s.) BEAUTY IS A RARE THING features over seven hours of music, six previously unreleased tracks, and contains a booklet of photos, a discography and contemporary commentaries by Ornette Coleman and a host of supporters and detractors.

This epic 6-CD set chronicles the joy and controversy that distinguished alto saxophonist Ornette Coleman's coming out party on Atlantic Records. Coleman was a transplanted Texan, a jazzman steeped in the blues, who struggled throughout the '50s on the Los Angeles scene just to find people to play with--let alone to accept his very personal sense of pitch and form. A prodigious composer, Coleman had accumulated hundreds of tunes by the time he made his first two albums for Contemporary, and began recording for Atlantic in 1959 with THE SHAPE OF JAZZ TO COME.

Vibe (12/93-1/94, p.162) - "...Ornette's alto sound is a raw streak of emotion--honest, direct, naked....on [BEAUTY IS A RARE THING], Ornette broke through to a lucid, poignant, and most important, celebratory musical statement..."

Musician (1/94, p.88) - "...This collection is a watershed of jazz history...for all of his innovations [Ornette] remains at heart a bluesman...there exists nothing before or since to match the sheer exultation of this, Ornette's great blush of youth...."

Village Voice (12/14/93, p.94) - "...Imperishable recordings...embodies a time and a place and an attitude, a unique way of looking at music and life....What a boon it is to have the Coleman Atlantics complete, correctly integrated, and beautifully remastered. No home should be without this music...."

Village Voice (3/1/94, p.5) - Ranked #4 in the Village Voice's list of the 10 Best Reissues Of 1993.

Stereo Review (3/94, p.100) - Performance: Epochal / Recording: Good - "...[Coleman] caught some of the day's most intrepid experimentalists by surprise, because instead of borrowing compositional structures from Europe as they did, he made regenerative use of an older jazz vocabulary of smeared notes and collective improvisation....if you claim to like jazz, you can't afford to be without it...."