3,5,8 in Bloomington, MN

Bassist
Gui Duvignau
was born in France and grew up in Belo Horizonte, Brazil. He attended the Berklee College of Music in Boston, moved to Portugal, then returned to Paris before coming to New York to get a master's degree at NYU. Along the way, he recorded 2010's
Porto
in collaboration with singer and songwriter
Sofia Ribeiro
, and 2016's
Fissura
leading a French sextet.
3,5,8
, his
Sunnyside
debut, features the bassist playing nine original compositions accompanied by a cast of New York-based musicians who include Argentine pianist
Santiago Leibson
, German guitarist
Elias Meister
, saxophonist
Billy Drewes
, and star session drummer
Jeff Hirschfield
.
Opener "Volta" rumbles into existence with a cascading, circular set of chords from
Leibson
while
Duvignau
accents the changes on his folksy melody.
Hirschfield
doesn't keep time so much as dance with it, a la
Paul Motian
. His bandmates syncopate the melody, altering cadences and stress points but never resolving the harmony.
Drewes
and
Meister
make up the frontline on "Yerevan." With
comping the changes,
's passionate playing bridges the lilting tonal articulation from the guitarist, saxophonist, and rhythm section. "Minas" is titled after the Brazilian state Minas Gerais, where
's hometown of Belo Horizonte is located.
's gently distorted guitar tones make an utterance before
punctuates his elongated phrasing.
adds some sparse chords in the upper register as
ticks his ride cymbal.
solos amid the droning exchange, piecing together an elliptical melody along the way. When
begins to articulate it in modal pulses,
,
, and
drive harder, adding heft and ballast that allow
to bring it under the umbrella of swing; the group interplay here is striking. "Une Pensee Pour Paris" is a trio number that begins as a lilting, haunted ballad and evolves first into deep blues, then into impressionist post-bop before returning to whisper its source ballad to a conclusion. "Detuned for Drewes" is punchy bop for a pianoless trio, with
's bass twinning lines with the saxophonist as
guides the knotty stop-and-start action with dominant swing. "Somewhat" is introduced by the bassist walking a slow blues amid crash cymbal accents from
.
picks up on the blues walk with angular lines and distortion as
tracks the ghost of the melody while fully engaging the drummer's shuffle. Halfway through,
erupts in a razor-wire solo that
appends by adding a deeper harmonic dimension -- without abandoning the groove.
joins the pair, honking, sputtering, and moaning in a gritty swirl of blues and noir-ish swing. Ultimately,
is a wonderful showcase for
's writing; his compositions offer kaleidoscopic harmonic and rhythmic vocabularies that reflect many root sources, but he integrates them into a sound completely his own and balances them with his sidemen's many strengths. Though
is not yet a household name among American jazz fans, it's only a matter of time before he is. ~ Thom Jurek