Martin Wind was born in Flensburg, in the far north of Germany near the Danish border, in 1968. He started on guitar at 12 and switched to electric bass at 15 to fill a chair in his school's big band, later moving to upright bass. He studied at the Cologne Conservatory under Wolfgang Güttler, a former bassist with the Berlin Philharmonic, earning his diploma as an orchestral musician in 1995. That year he also placed third at the International Thelonious Monk Institute's bass competition in Washington, D.C., performing in front of a jury that included Ron Carter, Charlie Haden and Pat Metheny, and in 1996 his trio Dreiklang won the first Cognac Hennessy/Blue Note Jazz Search in Germany, which led to a recording contract with Blue Note. The same year, on a scholarship from the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), he moved to New York to study at NYU, completing a master's degree in jazz performance and composition in 1998 under Mike Richmond, Jim McNeely, Tom Boras, Mike Holober and Kenny Werner. In 2000 he became the first jazz musician to receive the Cultural Award of his home state, Schleswig-Holstein.

Wind built his New York career simultaneously as a leader and as one of the city's most trusted sidemen. His debut as a leader, Gone with the Wind (1993, with pianist Bill Mays and drummer Keith Copeland), predates his move to New York; since then he has released more than 25 albums under his own name or in co-billed partnerships, including the long-running Martin Wind Quartet with multi-reedman Scott Robinson, pianist Bill Cunliffe (later Bill Mays) and drummer Tim Horner (later Matt Wilson), active since the mid-2000s. As a sideman his credits run past 100 albums, anchored by longstanding trio work with pianists Bill Mays, Dena DeRose, Bill Cunliffe and Ted Rosenthal, and by a long tenure in drummer Matt Wilson's various bands, including Wilson's "Honey and Salt" project setting the poetry of Carl Sandburg. He has also recorded and toured with Pat Metheny, Sting, Michael and Randy Brecker, John Scofield, Clark Terry, Toots Thielemans, Monty Alexander, Lalo Schifrin, Frank Wess, Phil Woods, Buddy DeFranco, Hank Jones, Johnny Griffin, James Moody, Slide Hampton, Curtis Fuller, Bucky Pizzarelli, Mike Stern and the Vanguard Jazz Orchestra, among many others. Since 2015 he has held a chair in the Kennedy Center Honors Gala Orchestra, backing artists such as James Taylor, Renée Fleming, John Legend, Chaka Khan, Aretha Franklin and Herbie Hancock at the annual televised gala.

The Martin Wind Quartet's catalog forms the core of his output as a leader: Salt & Pepper! (2008, Challenge Records) and Get It? (2010, Laika Records) were followed by Turn Out the Stars: Music Written by or Inspired by Bill Evans (2014, What If? Music), an expanded date with an Italian chamber orchestra (Orchestra Filarmonica Marchigiana) that drew a review from Paquito D'Rivera calling it "disgustingly beautiful." Light Blue (2017), Licorice & Beer (2018, a duo record with German guitarist Ulf Meyer) and My Astorian Queen: 25 Years on the New York Jazz Scene (2021, marking a quarter-century since his move to the city) followed on Laika Records. In 2022 Wind convened the New York Bass Quartet, an ensemble of four bassists (Wind, Gregg August, Jordan Frazier and Sam Suggs) backed by drummer Lenny White or Matt Wilson and pianist/organist Gary Versace, for Air, a record DownBeat gave four and a half stars, with critic Bill Milkowski calling it a "bass manifesto." Wind has also maintained two long-running duo/trio projects rooted in his German upbringing: a decades-long partnership with countryman guitarist Ulf Meyer, documented across nine albums from The Baltic (1994) to Time Will Tell (2022), and the Gravity Trio with German saxophonist Peter Weniger and drummer Jonas Burgwinkel, a collaboration dating to the late 1980s that has produced Gravity (2022) and September (2026, Laika Records), the latter with a guest appearance by Scott Robinson. His most recent releases as a leader include Counterpoint (2023, a trio with trombonist Ed Neumeister and pianist Jim McNeely) and Stars (2026, Newvelle Records), a vinyl-only trio date with pianist Kenny Barron, clarinetist Anat Cohen and drummer Matt Wilson.

On the sideman side, Wind's discography includes a substantial run of big-band and orchestral work: sessions with the Bundesjazzorchester under Peter Herbolzheimer, the WDR, NDR, HR and RBB radio big bands in Germany, and the Ted Nash Big Band's Chakra (2013, Plastic Sax Records), a seven-movement suite for 16-piece big band on which he holds the full-album bass chair. He has also recorded film scores for Carter Burwell (The Alamo, Fur, True Grit) and Alexandre Desplat (Julie & Julia), and contributed arrangements to the 2014 film Love Is Strange. In 2026, Wind played bass in guitarist Roni Ben-Hur's touring sextet for a one-night performance of Ben-Hur's Abriendo Puertas material, billed "Opening Doors: Roni Ben-Hur's Musical Milestone," at Dizzy's Club, Jazz at Lincoln Center, on June 25, 2026, alongside Ingrid Jensen on trumpet, Ray Gallon on piano, Jason Tiemann on drums and Marianne Solivan on vocals. Wind does not appear on the Abriendo Puertas studio album itself (Dot Time Records, 2026), which was recorded in Havana with an all-Cuban rhythm section led by pianist Alejandro Falcón; the Dizzy's Club date was the material's separate New York concert premiere, assembled specifically for the room. Wind teaches on the faculty of New York University and Hofstra University, and has taught at the National Youth Jazz Orchestra of Germany and the Centrum, Stanford and Litchfield jazz camps.

Wind names Niels-Henning Ørsted Pedersen, Ray Brown, Ron Carter, Paul Chambers, Charlie Haden, Marc Johnson and Gary Peacock as his principal models on the instrument, and that lineage shows in a style built for accompaniment: a big, centered arco and pizzicato tone, meticulous time, and an ear tuned to the trio and quartet settings that dominate his career rather than to solo virtuoso display, though his own bass-concerto ("Legacy," premiered with his hometown orchestra in 2018) and the multi-bassist Air project show a real interest in the instrument's orchestral and compositional possibilities beyond the rhythm section. His original conservatory training in classical orchestral bass shows up throughout his catalog's recurring chamber-jazz and crossover projects, from the string-orchestra arrangements on Turn Out the Stars to his sonata "Into the Light" for bass and piano. As a composer he favors lyrical, through-composed material over blowing vehicles, and his standing as a first-call sideman rests on four decades of trio work behind pianists (Mays, DeRose, Cunliffe, Rosenthal) who prize a bassist who supports without crowding.