Album: Chick Corea, Solo Piano Improvisations (ECM)

Excellent-value three-disc box-set of Corea's still shockingly good Piano Improvisations Vols 1&2 from 1971, together with 1983's Children's Songs.

The two early albums caught Corea at a vital point between free jazz and fusion and may be the best thing he's ever done. The real highlights are at the beginning of the first disc, while the miniatures that follow, along with much of Vol 2, are more abstract. By the time of the pseudo-classical Children's Songs, the endearing tentativeness had been lost and Corea sounds mannered.