Unlike solo recordings by Cecil Taylor, this will not give you many hints about the organization of his more challenging group music. And like the rest of Sun Ra's catalog, this runs the gamut from soulful to beautiful to unremittingly difficult and dissonant. Sometimes it sounds like Ra comping, sometimes the originals here sound like lost standards with Saturnian flourishes. But rather than a primer for his group works or a summation/miniaturization of his ideas, think of this as just another unique way that Ra put across his music. There are very few recordings where he sticks to piano, much less in a solo context, and listening to this record rather than studying it proves to be a most enjoyable experience. It doesn't charge me up the way the best group stuff does, but there's nothing here that's anything less than fun to hear.