The radical but cool-toned multireedist Jimmy Giuffre was never one to make an obvious gesture. After making waves with his unorthodox trios of the late-1950s and early-1960s, he retreated somewhat from the stage frontline to teach and compose for other mediums. In the 1980s he formed the post-fusion quartet the Jimmy Giuffre 4, which featured Pete Levin's electronic keyboards work in a prominent role. The first three discs in this remastered box set of his releases on the Italian Soul Note label are drawn from this comparatively low-profile period in Giuffre's career. One track on Dragonfly was composed as part of a film score, and the ambient nature of much of the work is more cinematic than many jazz purists might like. All the same, Giuffre is rarely less than interesting and Liquid Dancers – which credits his wife, Juanita Odjenar Giuffre, as a composer alongside the band member credits – is particularly beguiling. In 1989, Giuffre perhaps finally did do an obvious, and very wonderful, thing when he reunited on stage with his early-1960s collaborators Paul Bley and Steve Swallow; the mid-1990s Conversations with a Goose was one of the studio fruits of the reunion. By this point Swallow had switched to electric bass but otherwise the continuities with the trio's classic earlier sets – Fusion, Thesis, Free Fall, etc – are blessedly apparent in their empathic interplay.