This is the moment that Bobby Shew (who had moved to LA earlier in the decade) took the decision to front his own small group. He had paid his dues with show bands (and Buddy Rich) in Vegas, and since worked with Horace Silver, Frank Strazzeri and Bud Shank, as well as in the big bands of Louie Bellson and Gerald Wilson, but after a conversation with pianist Bill Mays, he realised that 1979 was the moment to lead a band in his own right. His beautifully paced flugelhorn solo on ‘A Child Is Born’ reveals that everything was in place for this to go on to be a long-lived band, and even earn a Grammy nomination. As well as including the perfect partnership with Mays (whose piano solo on that same tune is equally dazzling), this band also demonstrated Shew's frontline affinity with tenorist and flautist Gordon Brisker. The two of them wrote the remainder of the repertoire for the album, and like all the best post-bop quintet frontlines, they know exactly when to work together and when to stay out of each other's way. There's a nod to fusion on Shew's ‘Kachina’, and to the bebop tradition on ‘Navarro Flats’, and there's seldom a moment on the whole record when we're not aware that we're listening to a trumpeter/flugelhornist with exceptional technique and the taste to know how to use it.