Musique du Bois has been critically well received, and it is regarded as among the best of Woods' releases. In Profiles in Jazz, Raymond Horricks says of the album and Woods that "from first to last it provides a continuous example of the fertility of his imagination".
Allmusic indicates that the album is "a widely acknowledged modern jazz masterpiece, a classic in the discography of Woods, easily amongst the best five recordings of his long and storied career".[5]
Music
Horricks mentions that "[i]t doesn't matter how randomly one chooses an individual track... the fact remains that the buckets brought up from his private artesian well of the mind are in an inexhaustible chain".
National Public Radio singled out the "haunting" song "The Summer Knows", indicating that "Woods explores all of its melodic possibilities" with the help of Jaki Byard, "one of the most compelling and versatile pianists in jazz".[7] The Byard-Davis-Dawson rhythm section (compared to Herbie Hancock-Ron Carter-Tony Williams) was also employed by a tenor saxophonist who had his own style, Booker Ervin
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