Few bands apart from Ellington have had such day by day, week by week documentation of their activities as Stan Kenton. These four CDs cover 11 concerts in five months, preserved from airshots. From the band’s East Coast stint, we’re in New Jersey, Massachusetts, New Hampshire and New York states, with a quick flip to the Midwest in Ohio. There’s remarkably little duplication of tracks and this was also a time when Kenton’s bombastic and expansive instincts were reined in by economic necessity and the realities of life on the road. So the results are (given occasionally flaky source material in terms of sound quality) really amazingly consistent and a marvelous portrait of one of the best working bands of the early 1950s, featuring some great soloists. Lee Konitz is in particularly fine form on the earlier volumes (he takes a break on 24) and Rosolino, Candoli and Sims make for a highly accomplished quartet of major soloists, with Ernie Royal’s stratospheric trumpet register catering for bats and Stan Levey proving his credentials as a big band drummer. Even if you are not a regular Kenton fan, there’s plenty of good material here and, who knows, this version of the band might just win you round!