Just on the sheer guts alone of making an album featuring four bassists, you’ve got to admire the moxie and creativity of bassist Martin Wind. He forms a quartet with three other bassists in Gregg August, Jordan Frazier and Sam Suggs, sometimes mixing and matching with guests Matt Wilson/dr-perc, Lenny White/dr and Gary Versace/p-org-acc. The tunes are a collection of originals, jazz standards and even some baroque thrown in, and the album is both accessible and artistically creative. Who’d a thought?!?
The album is bookended by a pair of variations of JS Bach’s “Air”, with the first one being a lovely and palpably rich “Quartet” with glorious harmonies of the bows, while the “Trio” take has Wind with Versace’s organ and Wilson’s tasty drums in a sublime serenity. Wind’s own “(Give Me Some) G-String” mixes brooding bows with boogieing B3, while there’s a rich mix of bow and pizzicato for the misty “Iceland Romance”. The strings give a parlor mood to a Beatles Medley that ranges from a nostalgic “Long and Winding Road” to a get down “Lady Madonna”. Versace hums out over a nifty pulse on “Birdland” and gives a churchy mood to Charlie Haden’s “Silence”. The basses take turns soloing now and then, with arcos and pickings fitting logically into the scenario. This is one you’ll take in multiple times, first for the novelty, and then for the glory.