Like other Scott DuBois works, ‘Summer Water’ is sagacious and spiritually deep, only this time, only DuBois’ guitar is needed for those qualities to shine through.

It was easy to find jazz records that deserved a year-end salute; maybe ‘too’ easy. The heavy lifting came from figuring out which stood above the rest for this Best of 2017 list.

DuBois’s desire to blur the lines between creative jazz, chamber music and folk forms is a quest others before him have taken on, but the challenge of putting it all together both coherently and provocatively is where many have fallen short. Not so with ‘Autumn Wind,’ it excels at that.

S. Victor Aaron picks the best of 2015’s modern and mainstream jazz albums, including John Scofield, Matthew Shipp, Antonio Sanchez and others.

With his composing pen, leadership and guitar, Scott DuBois has painted a Monet with ‘Winter Light’.