It would have made chronological sense if this had arrived before Fresh Sound's 1960-62 Sextets reissue (reviewed last month) but it's good to have these three-and-a-bit LPs together, though they're possibly more uneven. Russell's first album under his own name was with a sextet – a full-sounding one with Farmer, McKusick and guitarist Galbraith as front-line – but the rest is all big-band with very individual writing. In addition to the 1959 release New York, N.Y. (including a couple of quirkily arranged standards, as well as rapping by Hendricks) and 1960's celebrated Jazz In The Space Age, the collection scores by incorporating the 12-minute ‘All About Rosie’ from the various-artists 1957 concert previously reissued on Birth Of The Third Stream. Common to each of these works is the muscular work of Bill Evans, joined on part of Space Age by Paul Bley – and Evans collectors need to hear these performances – but other soloists make their mark briefly, including Coltrane and Golson. One reservation about this compilation: While putting the Smalltet tracks in the exact order of recording (compared to the original album sequence and previous reissues) has some benefits, it makes no sense to separate Space Age's two-piano tracks from the originally interleaved big-band pieces – you can't readily re-programme them yourself, when they're on two separate discs. Replacing the last six tracks of CD1 with the first half of New York, N.Y. would have enabled retention of Russell's running-order and made for a better listen. Finally, for those who care about such things, the dates given here for Space Age are now confirmed as correct, and those on Universal's previous reissue were wrong.