John Coltrane – Avant-Garde (CD)

Recorded in 1960 during Coltrane's Atlantic period, these sessions find him alongside Don Cherry, Charlie Haden, and Ed Blackwell, the rhythm section Ornette Coleman had been reshaping jazz with. The collaboration captures a pivotal exchange between two revolutionary voices at the exact moment free jazz was rewriting the rules, with Coltrane pushing past hard bop toward the spiritual intensity that would define his later work.