Jazz has occupied a lot of seats in its history as an American pop music, from a dance music in the hands of the big bands to a vehicle for individual and group improvisation during the bop era, and it enjoys a distinction as a kind of music that can both work in the background or hold up to instrument-by-instrument scrutiny, and few musical genres exhibit such group interaction and dynamics. In short, jazz can be as challenging or as simple as one wants. This set is ostensibly music for autumn, and so it is, citing the season in the title for nearly every track, and the music here has a resigned tone, for the most part, but a joyous persistence too, balancing, as jazz does at its best, the seasons of both the inner and outer worlds, all in good time. ~ Steve Leggett