Don Cherry, Dewey Redman, Charlie Haden and Ed Blackwell came together to celebrate the work of mentor Ornette Coleman, but the repertoire of their Old and New Dreams quartet soon blossomed into a project of much wider scope, addressing also the musical experiences the players had made individually in their travels around the world. As well as superlative versions of Ornette’s “Lonely Woman“ and “Open or Close“ this highly influential album, now regard as a classic of new jazz, includes pieces by Cherry and Blackwell inspired by African music, Redman’s enigmatic “Orbit of La-Ba”, and Haden’s impressionistic “Song for the Whales”. Recorded in Oslo in August 1979 and produced by Manfred Eicher.

Codona is an album by the American sitarist and tabla player Collin Walcott, American jazz trumpeter Don Cherry and Brazilian jazz percussionist Naná Vasconcelos (collectively known by the acronym Codona). It was recorded in September 1978 and released on ECM the following year — the first of three self-titled albums by the trio.

Live at the Hilcrest Club 1958 (originally released in 1970 by America Records as The Fabulous Paul Bley Quintet) is a live album by pianist Paul Bley, saxophonist Ornette Coleman, trumpeter Don Cherry, drummer Billy Higgins and bassist Charlie Haden recorded in California in 1958 and released on the Inner City label in 1976. The album was the first live recording of Ornette Coleman, made shortly after he recorded his first album, Something Else!!!! and featuring the group (without Bley) that would soon record the Atlantic albums The Shape of Jazz to Come (1959) and Change of the Century (1960).

Miles Davis had publicly called him a madman. Leonard Bernstein found him, for his part, completely awesome. Few were those that didn’t have a definitive opinion on Ornette Coleman. Some kind of outlaw who preferred playing his own compositions rather than jazz classics, the American saxophonist also developed harmolodics, a theory uniting harmonics and melody. This box of ten discs compiles one of the most important era in the career of his author. Between 1959 and 1961, he released six studio albums for the Atlantic label. Six albums that are present here and spiced up with alternative takes and various bonuses, all of this of course impeccably remastered by John Webber. Albums included: The Shape Of Jazz To Come (1959), Change Of The Century (1959), This Is Our Music (1960), Free Jazz: A Collective Improvisation (1960), Ornette! (1961) and Ornette On Tenor (1961), and the compilations The Art Of Improvisers (1970), Twins (1971), To Whom Who Keeps A Record (1975) and The Ornette Coleman Legacy (1993).

Ornette Coleman's Atlantic debut, The Shape of Jazz to Come, was a watershed event in the genesis of avant-garde jazz, profoundly steering its future course and throwing down a gauntlet that some still haven't come to grips with. The record shattered traditional concepts of harmony in jazz, getting rid of not only the piano player but the whole idea of concretely outlined chord changes.

The debut by alto saxophonist Ornette Coleman revolutionized the jazz world and quickly earned a reputation as one of the most important and controversial recordings of the era. Credited as a crucial work of early "free jazz", the album featured a lineup of then up-and-coming jazz stars: trumpeter Don Cherry, pianist Walter Norris, bassist Don Payne, and drummer Billy Higgins.

1959's landscape-shifting "The Shape of Jazz to Come" is true to its title. Switching from tenor to alto sax, Coleman creates free jazz, a language where chords structures are absent and harmony gives way to improvisational whims. Ranked by Rolling Stone in the top 250 Greatest Albums of All Time, the Atlantic set finds Coleman collaborating with Don Cherry, Charlie Haden, and Billy Higgins in making a masterful work free of any identifiable chord structures. Nonetheless, melodies remain, as do engrossing repetitions of main themes.

Don Cherry's Eternal Rhythm Group was organized and recorded in collaboration with the Berlin Jazz Festival 1968. Cherry assembled some of Europe's jazz elite, including Germans trombonist Albert Mangelsdorff, vibraphonist Karl Berger, and Pianist Joachim Kühn, and the innovative American guitarist Sonny Sharrock.

During Coltrane’s Atlantic years, he made important recordings such as "Giant Steps" and "My Favorite Things", recorded albums with Milt Jackson, Don Cherry, and Eric Dolphy and made his debut on the soprano saxophone. The Penguin Guide to Jazz assigned its 'Crown' award to the box set, in addition to giving it a four-star rating (of a possible four).

"Complete Communion" is a 1966 album by American jazz composer Don Cherry, his first release on Blue Note Records. Each side of the original LP were suites, side-long compositions working with several themes. Critics have proposed this recording as an important innovation in the free jazz of the time, introducing "an alternative both to athematic improvising and to monothematic pieces".

This album of duos stands out as one of a kind; recorded during a phase in which he began to consistently incorporate a freer musical language into his playing, and set within a constellation of diverse duo formations, there emerges an exciting portrait of the central figure in German jazz: Albert Mangelsdorff. "His Friends" here are: Don Cherry, Elvin Jones, Karl Berger, Attila Zoller, Wolfgang Dauner, and Lee Konitz.

Saxophonist Archie Shepp is best known for his passionately Afrocentric music of the late 1960s, His tenor sax solos were searing, harsh, and unrelenting, played with a vivid intensity while he was viewed as perhaps the most articulate and disturbing member of the free generation. On this album he performs with the avant-garde jazz ensemble The New York Contemporary Five, "a group which, despite its short lease on life, has considerable historical significance", laying "the cornerstone of what might be called the mainstream of free jazz".

This historically significant album by the New York Contemporary Five was lead by tenor saxophone player Archi Shepp and included four other equally talented free jazz musicians to create an album that highlights the virtuosic nature of jazz music. Although a short-lived group, this album is quite historic for many contemporary jazz musicians.

This ground-breaking anthology features Coltrane’s greatest hits from his Atlantic period. The album compiled of originals and classic standards includes the massive hits “My Favorite Things”, “Body and Soul” and “Giant Steps”. This Hi-Res remastering is the only way to experience one of jazz’s greatest tenor players.

In the late 1960s, the American trumpet player and free jazz pioneer Don Cherry (1936–1995) and the Swedish visual artist and designer Moki Cherry (1943–2009) began a collaboration that imagined an alternative space for creative music, most succinctly expressed in Moki’s aphorism “the stage is home and home is a stage.”