Scott Dubois - Autumn Wind (CD)

Release Date: 10/27/17

Scott DuBois has managed to do the impossible in bringing sound to season to sound. Allaboutjazz.com

In a period in which the boundaries between musical genres are rapidly dissolving, there still exist major differences between what we still call a “jazz” band and those of other musical classifications.Perhaps the most significant of these is that longevity in a jazz ensemble will nearly always have an entirely positive effect on the music. That’s clearly a huge factor when listening to the high-caliber international quartet put together over a decade ago by the New York-based guitarist-composer Scott DuBois. It features the in-demand NYC double bassist Thomas Morgan, the virtuoso German multi-reedsman Gebhard Ullmann and Danish drummer Kresten Osgood. In 2015 DuBois' quartet released Winter Light. The distinguished UK-based author Richard Williams remarked that Winter Light, “evokes the example of Claude Monet in his desire to capture the shifting light in changing seasons.” Autumn Wind, is a close relation; it can similarly be likened to a thematically-linked series of paintings in an art exhibition. DuBois takes the “seasons” concept to a whole new level with a series of pieces in celebration of the restless, unpredictable nature of autumn. At each step of the way, DuBois’ quartet takes us on a mesmerizingly impressionistic musical journey that is an organic yet highly cohesive mix of elements drawn from the likes of modern jazz, contemporary classical music and Americana. When Richard Williams wrote that the previous album Winter Light would “sound good in any season,” he could have been speaking, too, about Autumn Wind, an unpredictable yet seamless, sophisticated yet approachable set of music. DuBois’ is contemporary tone poetry of the highest order.