“You might as well get ready to hear the name Ray Zepeda quite a lot in jazz circles during the coming years. Here’s an emerging player with a solid musical education and a substantial grounding in the jazz book. Zepeda strikes me as one of those prodigy types who probably blew everyone away in his high school and college stage bands. And he continues doing so on this energetic outing. Based in Los Angeles, Zepeda cooks it up with three LA area monsters, Rich Eames, piano, Darek Oles, bass, and Joe LaBarbera, drums. The session gets underway with a straight forward reading of ‘Stella By Starlight’ and continues with ‘Step By Step,’ a Zepeda original which bears a cousinly musical relationship to John Coltrane’s mega-hit, ‘Giant Steps.’ …Billy [Childs’s] tune called ‘Midland.’ [is] a feature for soprano sax, and Zepeda makes it a dramatic ride. ‘You Haven’t Changed’ is a warm 3/4 time Zepeda original, and it’s charming melody line features pianist Rich Eames. The set concludes with the rarely heard Frank Loesser opus, ‘Never Will I Marry,’ played with a subtle backbeat. …Zepeda is off and running. Keep an eye on him…”
– George Fendel, Jazz Society of Oregon