Moving On

YOU NEED ONLY check out the music of Scott Henderson to recall why the guitar style known as fusion was so exciting at its inception, back when it was a fresh stew of raw rock and jazz sophistication. Over three decades and almost two dozen recordings, Henderson’s work has preserved all that made fusion great — the sounds, the energy, the harmonic and rhythmic interest — while never descending into the smooth jazz or pointless pyrotechnics that sometimes gave the genre a bad name.

With 2015’s , Henderson shifted toward the more complex music he created with the band Tribal Tech. On his new album, (CD Baby), the guitarist continues in that vein while creating a different texture, thanks in part to his trio’s new rhythm section of bassist Romain Labaye and drummer Archibald Ligonnière. “The feel on is lighter, because Romain and Archibald have a bit more jazz vocabulary than [] Travis [] and Alan [],” he says. “Also, Romain is playing a four-string bass, whereas Travis played a five-string, so there are fewer low frequencies in the music.”