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PHILIP CATHERINE and MARTIN WIND Duo Art - New Folks ACT 9621-2

Old Folks

Fried Bananas

Hello George

Blues in the Closet

How Deep is the Ocean

Jenny Wren

Song for D

Sublime

Pivoine

L’Eternel Désir

Standing at the Window Waving Goodbye

Toscane

Winter Moon

Philip Catherine (guitar) and Martin Wind (bass)

Recorded April 2013 at Realistic Sound Studio

ACT 9621-2 [57:13]

Siggi Loch has produced another winner. Guitarist Philip Catherine and bassist Martin Wind form a duo so subtle of mood and texture and so compelling in their textural variety and song choices that their programme never relinquishes its quiet grip. The play list takes in Dexter Gordon and Irving Berlin, Hoagy Carmichael and Hank Jones. It also excavates – its first track – Willard Robison’s Old Folks. And of course there is time, and there is space, for originals from both protagonists.

That first track - taken slowly with exemplary and effortless swing – is a marker of what follows. Gordon’s angular but loping Fried Bananas produces an ebullience and drive that dovetails perfectly with the timbral entwining between the two men. Truly, this is high quality string playing. Catherine’s homage to George Shearing cheekily quotes Tea for Two in passing whilst Oscar Pettiford’s Blues in the Closet inspires a blues-rock solo from Catherine that remains articulate and composed. Even more compelling perhaps is Irving Berlin’s How Deep Is The Ocean, a small master-class in dynamic variance, clever harmonies, a walking bass line, and solos finely distributed between the two instruments: Catherine’s well-co-ordinated comping behind Wind’s solo is exemplary.

Catherine manages to evoke a delightful, light tone for McCartney’s Jenny Wren – a fine, unusual choice – which edges close to the folkloric in places, whilst Wind’s own Song for D is a beautiful reverie: changes in mood, changes in pace. His arco work on Hank Jones’s Sublime is excellent and the suave playing on Catherine’s Pivoine equally so. I’ve run out of superlatives so let me end by commending the slightly longer, more richly textured Catherine original L’Eternel Désir and for the perfectly natural way this duo has internalised the music on which they draw, whether it is light rock, ballad, blues or standard. Their tones are rich and resonant, their interplay telepathic. And the recording is marvellously detailed. There’s nothing I didn’t like here.

Jonathan Woolf

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