The year 1961 was an incredibly productive one for John Coltrane. Impulse! bought out his contract with Atlantic records and he was almost immediately in the studios in May and June to record Africa/Brass. On 2 and 3 November Impulse! recorded him live at the Village Vanguard with his regular quartet plus Eric Dolphy, sessions that produced Live at the Village Vanguard and Impressions. Almost immediately afterwards the same group then embarked on a 30 concert plus tour of Europe under the aegis of Norman Granz. Several performances were broadcast, and this collection brings together six concerts, recorded in Paris, Copenhagen, Helsinki and Stockholm. These concerts have most recently appeared on CD as The Complete November 18, 1961 Paris Concerts (In Crowd), Complete 1961 Copenhagen Concert (Gambit), The 1961 Helsinki Concert (Gambit) and Live In Stockholm 1961 featuring Eric Dolphy (Charly/Le Jazz). However, gathered together in this 4-CD set, they have been remastered producing a sharper definition of sound than previous releases, and come with the benefit of far superior liner notes, courtesy of Simon Spillett. In many ways these recordings are superior to the Impulse! dates in that Dolphy, who features on 16 of the 21 tracks, enjoys a far more central role within the group than he did with the Impulse! recordings, where he appeared just twice on the original vinyl releases which offered five Village Vanguard performances between them. Coltrane considered Dolphy's contribution to this shortlived collaboration inspirational, and as Spillett points out, these concerts “contain some of the finest improvisation Coltrane ever delivered on a concert stage” – reason enough to excite purchase. However, today it will come as a surprise to many that the group was severely mauled by the critics when the tour opened on 11 November 1961 at the Gaumont State Theatre in Kilburn. During the course of the seven English dates, the baton was passed from the London press to the provincial press who were similarly out of their depth. Such was the critical response – Benny Green called the Kilburn concert “the low water mark of jazz in this country” while Melody Maker's Bob Dawbarn admitted he was “baffled, bothered and bewildered” – that Coltrane never appeared in the UK again.