Marc Johnson

Overpass is the first solo album by the American double bassist Marc Johnson, and his contribution to ECM's small line of solo bass records. That line runs from Dave Holland, Gary Peacock and Eberhard Weber to Larry Grenadier, and Johnson has named Holland's Emerald Tears as an early inspiration. Five originals sit beside three tunes from the jazz repertoire, played in a little over 43 minutes.

Johnson's idea of the bass as a lead voice goes back to his time in the last trio of Bill Evans, which he joined at 25. There the Miles Davis tune Nardis became his nightly solo feature. He recorded Overpass in January and February 2018 at Nacena Studios in São Paulo, on a bass by the Brazilian luthier Paulo Gomes. He produced it with Eliane Elias, with Rodrigo de Castro Lopes recording, Steve Rodby mixing and Manfred Eicher as executive producer. Everything is acoustic, with overdubs on two tracks only.

The album opens with Eddie Harris's Freedom Jazz Dance, built on a droning pedal tone from which Johnson pushes the bop theme into bolder variations. Nardis and Alex North's Love Theme from Spartacus, both Evans trio favourites, follow. Samurai Fly recasts Samurai Hee-Haw, which Johnson had recorded with his band Bass Desires and with the John Abercrombie trio on its 1989 album. Here two bowed lines run over plucked ground figures, and in Yin and Yang bowed and plucked voices answer each other. And Strike Each Tuneful String starts from a field recording of Burundian inanga players and moves from slow low thrums to a fast run of notes. The closing Whorled Whirled World builds its momentum from repetition.

John Lewis in The Guardian found the highlights in the overdubbed pieces, "particularly the spookily beautiful Samurai Fly and the wonderfully jagged Yin and Yang". Richard Williams, writing on The Blue Moment, wrote that Johnson had made an album in which "a single instrument acts as the filter for profound emotions". Several reviewers singled out the recorded sound of the bass, with its full body and resonance.

This is the CD edition, ECM 2671, first released on 27 August 2021.