Collaboration West, released in 1956, features vibraphonist Teddy Charles working alongside West Coast jazz musicians including Shorty Rogers, Jimmy Giuffre, and Shelly Manne. The album blends Charles’s more exploratory, modernist tendencies with the cooler, more structured sound typical of the West Coast scene. Its compositions are angular and inventive, with shifting time signatures and complex harmonies, but still maintain a sense of clarity and space. The result is a thoughtful and progressive jazz record that bridges the cerebral aspects of East Coast experimentation with the laid-back finesse of West Coast jazz.
