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, à 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 Leibson comping the changes, Duvignau'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 Duvignau's hometown of Belo Horizonte is located. Meister's gently distorted guitar tones make an utterance before Duvignau punctuates his elongated phrasing. Leibson adds some sparse chords in the upper register as Hirschfield ticks his ride cymbal. Duvignau solos amid the droning exchange, piecing together an elliptical melody along the way. When Leibson begins to articulate it in modal pulses, Drewes, Meister, and Duvignau drive harder, adding heft and ballast that allow Hirschfield to bring it under the umbrella of swing; the group interplay here is striking. "Une Pensée 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 Duvignau's bass twinning lines with the saxophonist as Hirschfield 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 Hirschfield. Meister picks up on the blues walk with angular lines and distortion as Drewes tracks the ghost of the melody while fully engaging the drummer's shuffle. Halfway through, Meister erupts in a razor-wire solo that Duvignau appends by adding a deeper harmonic dimension -- without abandoning the groove. Drewes joins the pair, honking, sputtering, and moaning in a gritty swirl of blues and noir-ish swing. Ultimately, 3,5,8 is a wonderful showcase for Duvignau'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 Duvignau is not yet a household name among American jazz fans, it's only a matter of time before he is.
© Thom Jurek /TiVo