Saxophonist Ad Peijnenburg started a sax quartet called The Four Winds. In 1984 Peijnenburg formed The Six Winds, the first saxophone sextet in the world.
The way in which the group works remained the same over the years: the members come together during a certain period (mostly a couple of weeks) to rehearse and give concerts. Every tour they play a completely new program and all the compositions are composed by the members of the ensemble. The Six Winds see themselves explicitly as a collective: although based in Holland (always at least four members are Dutch), The Six Winds was and is an international group, having as its members musicians like Bill Smith (Canada), John Tchicai (Denmark, USA) and, in 2001, Kazutoki Umezu (Japan) as well as Andrew White (USA).