The recording itself is a detailed, 24-bit soundscape that gives the listener a sense of practically being inside the music as it is being created. Metheny says, "I have done a lot of different kinds of recording over the years at this point, from recording entire albums in a few hours - what I call "documentary style recording" - to spending weeks at a time going over the most minute details of the recording process. It really depends on what kind of story you want to tell, and of course, what the function of the actual notes will have within that storytelling environment. This record, this way of playing and thinking about music is, in fact, best served by doing it really fast. We spent just a couple of days together in the studio, just for a few hours a day, just playing. We didn't even listen back to anything. The engineer, Rob Eaton, has worked on dozens of records with me, he knows how to get what is going on down on tape and I really trust him, so we could just play and not worry about the recording part of it much at all. A few weeks after we recorded, I began to look at what we had done, not really even knowing what was there. I was so happy with what I heard." The result is a worthy addition to the extraordinary body of work that Metheny has been building since he burst onto the international jazz scene as an innovative 18-year-old in 1974 as a member of Gary Burton's Quartet. Now as a 45-year-old master, he continues to represent the highest possible musical standard of excellence with each release, with each solo, and at his best, with each note. As the century ends and a new millennium begins, TRIO 99>00 is an exciting documentation of one of the world's most important jazz musicians. The implications of this music, with its deep insight into "the tradition" in all its manifestations, combined with the timeless yet forward-thinking clarity that is watermarked into virtually all of Metheny's work to date, bode well for the safe passage of jazz from this century to the next.