Tag Archives: bill frisell

Embracing the Mystery

Your host. Photo by Don James.
An old jazz bassist is busking on the street. He’s totally seasoned, been around, and he’s just playing one note. Just one note over and over, and he’s feeling that one note, finding different ways to say something with that one note. A young guy, just out of college, comes up and says, “Hey, man, you know, I play bass, too. Just got my jazz performance degree. Can I play your bass?” The old man gives him his bass and says, “Sure.” So the kid takes the bass, and he starts shredding, playing as fast as he can, as many notes as he can, a total showoff. When the guy finally stops, the old man looks at him and says, “Still searching, huh?”

This joke, passed on to me by my friend Jacqueline Ultan, a superlative cellist, helped crystallize an aggravation about the misuse of jazz that has pestered me for some time. Jazz, the music of freedom and liberation, offers players a unique opportunity to express their feelings, their personal point of view, with no holds barred, but too often, it seems to me, this freedom becomes a platform not for self-expression, but for self-indulgence, for self-congratulation, for showing off.

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Three New Releases from Different Compass Points

Saxophonist James Brandon Lewis honors the legacy of Dr. George Washington Carver with a passionate and adventurous chamber work that features unusual instrumentation. Chris Potter’s Circuits Trio brims with optimism and offers a deft mixture of acoustic and electronic. Bassist/composer Skúli Sverrisson and guitarist Bill Frisell offer a peaceful pool for communion with yourself.

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New Releases from a Trio of Trios

Jazz speaks in many dialects, or maybe it’s more accurate to say that different musical genres find it easy to apply jazz techniques to their native material. Gilfema (Lionel Loueke, Massimo Biolcati, Ferenc Nemeth) applies them to a West African musical palette; the Kenny Barron|Dave Holland Trio, Featuring Johnathan Blake, to a collection of compositions squarely in the mainstream of the American jazz tradition; Grégoire Maret, Romain Collin, and Bill Frisell, to a range of material in the Americana songbook. In sum, we have three outstanding trios offering three satisfying new recordings across a range of sensibilities.

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Newest Releases from Ron Miles and Bill Frisell

Cornetist/composer Ron Miles delivered a spellbinding evening of music for an Outpost Performance Space fundraiser a few weeks ago with his trio, which includes guitarist Bill Frisell and drummer Brian Blade. On his latest release, I Am a Man(Yellowbird Records), Miles adds a couple of players to the trio. Meanwhile, Frisell’s latest release, Music IS* (Okeh/Sony Masterworks), goes in the opposite direction: it’s a solo effort. Both, unsurprisingly given the participants, are worthy of attention. Continue reading