Arrival

Veteran guitarist Carl Filipiak was impressed enough with Randy Runyon, one of his teenaged students, that he arranged to record with him before the young man entered college. With bassist Steve Zerlin and drummer Todd Harrison providing strong rhythmic support, the pupil and his teacher embark on an aggressive journey mapped out by Runyon, tackling a number of well-known compositions written by jazz masters. Runyon teases the listener with a Eastern-like vamp to set up a fluid take of Miles Davis' "Solar," while the guitarists find something new within Joe Henderson's Latin-flavored "Recorda Me." The one standard of the session, "All the Things You Are," is an easygoing swinger that reveals Runyon's potential. The true acid test for any jazz musician is a ballad, and Runyon's funky setting of Billie Holiday's "God Bless the Child" is impressive (though the package oddly mislabeled it as Thad Jones' "A Child Is Born"). The two guitarists engage in a cooking take of Thelonious Monk's "Straight, No Chaser" and a roadhouse blues written by Filipiak to wrap the session. This CD should serve as an excellent introduction to Randy Runyon.