Vincenzo Virgillito’s Diversity of Basses

Cover of the album being discussed

Precondition is a solo album of performances by bassist Vincenzo Virgillito. According to the advance material I received, it was scheduled for release on January 1; but, as those following the above hyperlink will see, all twelve of the tracks are currently available for MP3 download through an Amazon.com Web page. The description of Virgillito as a “bassist” might mislead some unfamiliar with his work. While he is a virtuoso performer on the double bass, for this album he also plays electric bass, fretless instruments with both five and four strings, and analog pedals.

Three of the tracks on the album are tributes. Most importantly (at least to me) is an acknowledgment to the most adventurous jazz bass player of his day, Charles Mingus, with a performance of “Goodbye Pork Pie Hat.” I was glad to see that Virgillito’s interpretation was so imaginatively embellished that one could barely notice the tune that Mingus originally composed. The theme for “Danny Boy” is much more evident on the track that was conceived to honor the memory of Bill Evans. The other tribute is an original, “Word Drops,” which is given the subtitle “Jaco’s midnight,” presumably to acknowledge Jaco Pastorius. The remaining tracks are Virgillito originals, including five “Reset” tracks, which serve as “punctuation marks” over the course of the entire album.

Personally, I found the overall listening experience to be a mixed bag. Virgillito clearly had the capacity to evoke a wide variety of sonorities through his diversity of instruments and the supplementary technology. Nevertheless, for all of that diversity, I came away with an impression of rather bland navel-gazing. Perhaps his decision to take composers such as Mingus and Evans as points of departure raised my expectations too high. However, after listening to this album in its entirety, my first impression was to go back and listen to the “source of inspiration” on the Mingus Ah Um album.