The art and practice of listening is both difficult and underemphasized in our current world. Starting from the first cut on this great quartet recording led by trombonist Jeff Albert, it is easy to hear how much listening is happening on this record. Saxophonist Edward “Kidd” Jordan and Albert weave lines in and out of each other, matching call and response phrases that harken back to the jazz that came before this and the music that came before jazz. Bassist Joshua Abrams and drummer Hamid Drake also have a dialogue with each other and with the front line players. Drake’s rhythms are always steady on certain instruments but also full of accents and darts that push and pull the beat based on the other instrumentalists. When Albert composed most of these tunes, he presented them to the players with minimal direction, so the musical personalities here are pronounced and evident. A listener will not mistake this for some other group. Everyone here is given space to play and express their ideas, and, as the slow build of the title track shows, comment musically on the ideas of the other players. These improvisations are truly “spontaneous compositions.” Some of this music, particularly the Instigation Quartet tracks, gets abstract in its beauty toward the middle of the record, but never gets so far out as to lose meaning or be abstract for abstractions sake. The group listens to each other in making their statements even when they are not playing together, and that makes for a satisfying listening experience.