All of Ornette's classic Atlantic material has now been made available many times over but this reissued and repackaged collection makes clear just what an embarrassment of creative riches the work as a whole represents. From The Shape Of Jazz To Come to The Art Of The Improvisers via the bundle of previously unreleased material, To Whom Keeps A Record, the sustained flow of inspirational material is quite overwhelming. Although Coleman's enrichment of the burgeoning vocabulary of the avant-garde is a key chapter of both his personal history as well as that of jazz itself, the central point made by this musical feast is that Ornette was really becoming Ornette. The character of the pieces, from the ribbon swirl of the melodies to the whimsy of stop-time grooves to the emotional depth, the intense cry of the improvising, fulfills the ideal of only a select few – the artist is the genre. While Coleman's classic quartet is timeless one should also note the input of other iconoclasts, above all Eric Dolphy and Jim Hall.