Artist:     George Winston

Album:     Restless Wind

Label:     Dancing Cat Records/RCA Records

Release Date:     5.3.19

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Arriving at a time of socio-political tumult in America, George Winston’s Restless Wind stirs up a storm of unbridled emotions. Traversing the historical landscape of the country’s troubled past while grappling with its raging present, Winston’s 15^th solo piano album is full of instrumental contradictions, often reflective and tender, but also occasionally wild and adventurous.

Judicious in its sequencing and selection of beautifully reimagined works by artists as disparate as Sam Cooke, The Doors and Stephen Stills, as well as George and Ira Gershwin and others, Restless Wind picks at the scabs of bigotry, attempts to quell the drumbeats of war and weeps for the oppressed. It opens with Winston’s “Autumn Wind (Pixie #11),” a rich, dizzying array of chords and skittering runs that pays homage to New Orleans pianist James Brooks and his song “Pixie.” The bluesy rolls and drunken stagger of “Judge, Judge,” a Bessie Smith favorite also known as “Send Me to the ‘Lectric Chair,” bely the complexity and infectiousness of Winston’s sly chops, as he moves on to gracefully and slowly reveal the crumbling hopefulness and bruised laments of Cooke’s “A Change is Gonna Come,” Jose Lopez Alavez’s “Cancion Mixteca (Immigrant’s Lament)” and Mark Isham’s “The Times of Harvey Milk.” Through his jazzy artistry, Winston has that rare spiritual ability to make it seem as if you’re listening to an entire community’s heart being torn apart. And yet, Restless Wind also has soothing and healing qualities.

Sumptuous tones and overlapping textures abound on Restless Wind, as the Buffalo Springfield classic “For What It’s Worth” and the Gershwins’ “Summertime,” from Porgy and Bess, are scrambled almost to the point of being unrecognizable. Getting lost in their luxurious, dense thickets of ivories is a heavenly diversion from reality, and yet Winston’s reworkings of these familiar pieces retain their timeless relevance. The same is true of Winston’s ominous march through “The Unknown Soldier,” off The Doors’ Waiting for the Sun LP, as his version crescendos into a thundering, chaotic tempest. A Restless Wind is blowing. Winston’s work wonders if we’ll ever recover from the damage.

—Peter Lindblad