Longevity obviously has its rewards, as evidenced by this trio's thirty-odd years playing together. Their music has mellowed slightly with age, but on occasion burns just as brightly, with constant attention to detail. The disc's title is apt: concentrated listening will be rewarded.

The disc opens with "Z.D.W.A." and melodic figures on piano shadowed by parker's horn (he plays tenor throughout). Lovens' drumming is super-quick yet subtle, an underpinning of fleet rhythms and sudden pops just where the gaps in the other two's playing appear. Big ears indeed. This trio interplay gives way to a Schlippenbach solo that begins romantically and then catapults through several different styles — barrelhouse to stride to European folk-dance — before a low trilling brings the drums back in for a super fast, dense duet, with Lovens making more use of his bass drum than previously. Parker sneaks back in slowly and Alex makes room for him, leaving open spaces and gathering momentum for the rush into a roar that finds Parker pulling out stray Trane-tones, splitting them into tight chords. This rave-up eventually begins to splinter and ends with slow single-note runs on the piano.

Schlippenbach's playing has that odd humor that exists in so much euro-improv, and he is liable to toss just about anything into his stream-of-consciousness wanderings. Not as dense as Cecil Taylor, but just as fast, sometimes worrying a melodic cell for a minute or so and sometimes splashing about all over the keyboard.

Most of the remainder is composed of shorter pieces with composing credits spread about equally among the three — 3 tunes each to Schlippenbach and Lovens, 2 to Parker — and I'm wondering just how much of these pieces is composed. Whether they are fragments to be developed or themes for improvisations to be nailed to ultimately makes no difference however, as the "Gold" is in the mesh of sound they conjure up.