Recorded in one day for a small German label few had heard of in 1972, it was really the start of something big. Burton and Corea would tour the world, initially every year, then every other, for the following 45 years playing to sold-out houses, each musician drawing on a seemingly endless font of fresh ideas, leavened by learned and intuitive responses to each others' playing and no little inspiration. The four albums they recorded (two more for ECM and one for Concord in 2008) garnered five Grammy Awards. The beginning of that exhilarating collaboration is Crystal Silence. Whether on the quicksilver ‘Señor Mouse’, the reflective (and seductive) title-track or ‘What Games Shall We Play Today’ (that had made an appearance on Corea's brilliantly conceived, acoustic Return to Forever the previous year) this is jazz of the highest order. Spontaneously conceived, impeccably executed, like all jazz classics there is a timelessness about this music. Its multiple meanings and allusions are just as relevant to jazz today as they were back when they were committed to tape in the early 1970s.