For years, stories have been going around about a Filipino guitarist who has been doing things in Asia that no one is doing anywhere else. Now, after decades at the top of Hong Kong's commercial music world, this guadruple threat guitarist/composer/ arranger/music director has decided to make his own statement, on an international scale. "There were no compromises this time." Tony says. "No writing to make it easy on the players. This is exactly what I wanted." Given the complexity and energy of his music, it is apparent why he assembled L.A.'s finest players for the session. The musicians, for their part, found that Tony lived up to his legend. "Not many people in town can write like that," says Gary Foster.

If this recording is a landmark for Tony Carpio, it also marks new possibilities for guitar players everywhere, for it culminates four years of exploration on the frontiers of sound. On some tracks Tony uses a Roland GROW guitar synthesizer, customized to perfection, to sustain harmonies, and then solo on top of them. The result is a new avenue of expression, an orchestral guitar: listen to the intricate inner voices on Will It Ever Be?, which inspired Foster to play about as brilliantly as he ever has on disc.

Tony plays the way he composes, alternately challenging and seducing, and he gets back from his players what he puts in Clare Fischer's solo on I've Got Wheels was easily worth the 5,000-odd miles Tony travelled to obtain it. It also proves Tony's statement that Fischer not only played beautifully but "gave his heart to the project," clearly a gesture of acknowledgement to a fellow master of harmony. This session marks a long-overdue meeting between these two very complete musicians.

Flashes of inspiration are the calling cards of musicians of this calibre. Andy Simpkins adds an impromptu and possible involuntary vocal obligato to his solo on Jazz Begins at 40. Eric Marienthal, who is completely at home in the angular complexity of Just Let It Happen, pares down his sound to a soulful shout in Little Kate. In his solo on Uppercut, Harvey Mason manages to achieve brilliance without seeming to show off, a feat Chuck Findley also brings off with his insouciant flugelhorn on I Dedicate This To You. Steve Houghton makes the sifting time changes in Carpio's Recipe sound as natural as a rocking cradle. And John Patitucci, who complained jokingly to Tony that "you'll have 40 bass players calling you up with tendonitis," executes the bone-breaking lines on the title tune with ease. There are no passengers here.

In fact, the only thing wrong with this recording is that we've had to wait so long for it. Maybe, to quote another of his titles, Tony Carpio has been Waiting For The Right Time. This is obviously it.

Charles Martin