Another valuable Columbia box set of albums that are now getting harder to obtain in their original vinyl format. Shorter's Columbia output, numbering just four albums in all – Native Dancer (1974), Atlantis (1985), Phantom Navigator (1987) and Joy Ryder (1988) – have been augmented for this release by the inclusion of all Shorter's original compositions made while he was co-leader with Joe Zawinul of Weather Report (1971-86). This comprises two CDs of material, enabling a rounded picture of Shorter's compositional abilities to emerge over six albums. It serves to underline what a major jazz composer Shorter is, since these are not simply themes to bookend improvisation, but well-crafted examples of the composer's art, with intriguing and often-mysterious melodies underpinned by unexpected harmonies that numbers him among jazz's greatest composers. Taken together, this set is a real listening experience, a lot of detail is compressed into these performances that gradually reveals itself over time. It's a set that young jazz musicians with pretensions to the composer's art should study, jazz educators should know backwards and the rest of us should regard as an essential purchase since it includes some of the most fascinating and absorbing jazz made in the last 40 years.