Every fall record labels churn out box sets and special packages—sometimes elaborate, sometimes exploitive, sometimes worthwhile—designed to appeal to fanatics or end up as holiday gifts (and often both). I suppose if you have no interest in jazz, an eight-CD box set of music by Coleman Hawkins might seem uselessly extravagant, but all the releases I’ve collected here put music first, bells and whistles second (when there are any bells and whistles at all). Each would make a great present for the right friend or loved one—with any luck, these reviews will help you decide if you know that person (or are that person yourself).

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The 1971 album Sart is the transitional recording: thanks in part to the rock energy of electric guitarist Terje Rypdal, it retains the fury of its seething predecessor, Afric Pepperbird, so that you can feel the heavy thumbprints of Coltrane and Ayler and, on the wide-open title track, the influence of Miles Davis’s Bitches Brew. But Stenson’s majestic playing leavens the woolly energy, pushing the music in a contemplative direction—with help from a patient, space-carving rhythm section consisting of drummer Jon Christensen and bassist Arild Andersen. Witchi-Tai-To (1973) and Dansere (1975) are quartet recordings with Stenson, Christensen, and bassist Palle Danielsson. Both are all acoustic, and on the first you can hear the saxophonist smoothing out his tone, relaxing his phrases, and incorporating ideas from Scandinavian and North American folk music into the whole (Native American jazz saxophonist Jim Pepper wrote the title track). Dansere is more ethereal and lyrical, a development that set the stage for some unfortunate spin-offs—not just the antiseptic ECM house sound but also what came to be called “smooth jazz.” Garbarek’s style would calcify somewhat in the years to come, as though stuck in this shape, but in 1975 the beauty and high-level interplay in his music was still unique. $29.99

The eight-disc box—whose LP-size booklet includes precise and accessible liner notes by scholar and musician Loren Schoenberg, artistic director of the National Jazz Museum in Harlem—traces Coleman’s development from a slap-tonguing sideman for blues singer Mamie Smith to a star soloist with big-band legend Fletcher Henderson to a fixture in prewar all-star ensembles to a savvy bandleader in his own right. Included of course is his canonical 1939 reading of “Body and Soul,” but the other ballads are just as fantastic. In some ways this dynamic set could double as a primer on early jazz history, seen through the lens of one of its most durable figures—but it’s great no matter how you approach it. (Available only by mail via mosaicrecords.com.) $136

András Schiff, Johann Sebastian Bach: Das Wohltemperierte Clavier (ECM)

I’m still sad I missed the recent Symphony Center performance that pianist András Schiff gave of book two of The Well-­Tempered Clavier, part of an ongoing series for which he’s playing all of Bach’s music from memory. Schiff’s 1983 recording of the Goldberg Variations was my entry point into Bach, and few living pianists are so invested in the composer’s oeuvre. Luckily for me, last year Schiff made his second recording of both books of The Well-Tempered Clavier—each comprises 24 paired preludes and fugues, one pair for each of the major and minor keys—and ECM has released it in this magnificent four-CD box set.

Various artists, Diablos del Ritmo: The Colombian Melting Pot 1960-1985 (Analog Africa)

Though German label Analog Africa focuses on rarely heard music from West Africa, in 2010 it released a terrific collection by Colombian accordionist and bandleader Anibal Velasquez, whose work has always extended beyond cumbia, the de facto national genre. Most vintage Colombian reissues draw from the deep catalog of powerhouse label Discos Fuentes, but for the sprawling new double CD Diablos del Ritmo Analog Africa owner Samy Ben Redjeb relied almost entirely on tiny imprints such as Felito, Machuca, and Discos Tropical. The first disc looks at the myriad ways Colombians absorbed and translated African influences—funk, Afrobeat, champeta—and the second offers a dizzying range of homegrown variants of cumbia and related forms, including puya, mapale, and cumbiamba. I recognized a few artists’ names—Wganda Kenya, Sonora Dinamita, Alejandro Duran—but nearly all of the music was new to me.

Various artists, Work Hard, Play Hard, Pray Hard: Hard Time, Good Time, and End Time Music 1923-1936 (Tompkins Square)

Guitarist Nathan Salsburg, who’s also curator of the Alan Lomax Collection, built this three-CD set of early country and folk music from the massive record collection that Don Wahle of Louisville, Kentucky, amassed between the 50s and the early 80s. Salsburg got wind of Wahle’s trove the night before most of it was scheduled to be hauled away in a Dumpster, and he pulled an 11th-hour rescue. In his notes Salsburg writes that he’d been planning on assembling a compilation around the themes of working, playing, and praying, and Wahle’s records galvanized the project—the songs here show some of the ways rural southerners coped with toil through drink, romance, and religion. There are some country giants featured, including Gid Tanner, the Allen Brothers, and the Dixon Brothers, but most of the music is obscure; the majority of the songs have been unavailable since their original release on 78. As usual with the Tompkins Square label, the package (designed by Susan Archie) comes with excellent liner notes and fascinating photos. Encountering buried treasures like this always makes me wonder how many more American music can possibly still hold, but I’m thrilled they keep coming. $32.99