Dave Wilson - Ephemeral (2023)

Ephemeral is the latest release from Aotearoa New Zealand-based artist Dave Wilson, featuring Wilson on tenor saxophone and bass clarinet in an improvising ensemble including trumpet, guitar, bass, drums, and string quartet. With multi-layered grooves and intricate textures, Wilson creates musical worlds that foreground the wide-ranging musicalities of his collaborators and amplify the many dimensions of his playing. The album’s nine tracks take listeners down a path that explores ephemerality of all kinds, guided by alternatively floating and driving improvisatory melodies and rhythmic impulses of Wilson and the ensemble. In the themes that it approaches, Ephemeral is not simply about transience, it is about how we as humans are – only briefly – interconnected with one another and with other elements of the world. Along those lines, each of the album’s compositions explores relationships of some kind, and how they give meaning to and are expressed in sounds, spaces, and places.