Bill Frisell begins a five-night residency at New York's Village Vanguard with his trio, featuring bassist Tony Scherr and drummer Kenny Wollesen tonight. It was at the Vanguard that the trio recorded the "East" half of Frisell's 2005 double disc, East/West. Frisell was a central figure in the recent Melbourne International Jazz Festival, playing an "unforgettable" festival closer with the Trio, says The Age. "[I]t was a thrill to see such an influential, genre-defying artist on stage. Frisell has one of the most distinctive guitar sounds: a sound that radiates warmth and optimism, no matter how woozily dissonant or distorted it may become."
Bill Frisell begins a five-night residency at New York's Village Vanguard with his trio, featuring bassist Tony Scherr and drummer Kenny Wollesen tonight. It was at the Vanguard that the trio recorded the "East" half of Frisell's 2005 double disc, East/West during a five-night run back in December 2003; New York Times music critic Nate Chinen says that "Frisell conjured a compelling hallucination of the American popular songbook" on the album.
Frisell was a central figure in the recent Melbourne International Jazz Festival, held in Australia earlier this month. He performed at a number of different venues and in multiple formats, including a master class, a trio concert with Charlie Haden and Ethan Iverson, and a culminating performance with his own trio of Scherr and Wollesen. Opening that last performance was The BBC, featuring Tim Berne, Jim Black, and Wilco guitarist Nels Cline.
Melbourne's The Age says the festival-concluding concert by the Bill Frisell Trio was "unforgettable." Reviewer Jessica Nicholas writes of the guitarist:
This was his first visit to Australia, and it was a thrill to see such an influential, genre-defying artist on stage. Frisell has one of the most distinctive guitar sounds: a sound that radiates warmth and optimism, no matter how woozily dissonant or distorted it may become. He and his long-time trio colleagues (bassist Tony Scherr and drummer Kenny Wollesen) roamed exuberantly through an eclectic songbook—ranging from Burt Bacharach to Boubacar Traore—before an ecstatic finale, Frisell's irresistible country-pop anthem "That Was Then."
Read the full review at theage.com.au.
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Earlier, at the start of the festival, Nicholas's colleage at The Age, Michael Dwyer, spoke with Frisell for an extensive profile in the paper. Dwyer says, by way of introduction, that Frisell, like Charlie Parker before him, is "an instrumentalist with a voice of rare eloquence. What's made him one of the most acclaimed of his time is his limitless fluency in any conversation—as long as it's musical."
Singer Lucinda Williams offers her own telling description of Frisell for the article, saying, "He seems kind of like this big kid, then he sits down and pulls out his guitar and suddenly it's like Beethoven or something."
Read what Bill has to say about all of this in the complete article at theage.com.au.
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