Bill Frisell is in London tonight for a very special performance at Barbican Hall as part of the London Jazz Festival, which kicked off last Friday night with a performance featuring Natalie Merchant. For tonight's program, Frisell will join conductor/arranger Mike Gibbs and the BBC Symphony Orchestra for the premiere of a new piece by Frisell and Gibbs. In a nod to Frisell's American roots, it will be preceded by BBCSO performances of Copland's Appalachian Spring and Ives's Three Places in New England. The concert will be broadcast on BBC Radio 3, which commissioned the new work, this Tuesday, November 24.

The Financial Times previewed the event in a recent article that approached the idea of a symphonic jazz event with some trepidation, given the pitfalls it might entail, but finds little reason for such concern here.

"Frisell has fashioned the byways and backwaters of US culture into a musical style that has almost become a genre in its own right," says Financial Times writer Mike Hobart. "Panoramic and evocative, his cocktail of jazz warmth, country whine and the echoing throb of jukebox rhythm-and-blues conjures images from the underbelly of American life. It is a vision that he never fails to coax from the many ensembles he works with."

The article can be found at ft.com.

One of those many ensembles, Frisell's 858 Quartet, recently performed at the Blue Note Milan, and, says All About Jazz Italia's Paolo Peviani, the sets were "never ostentatious" but rather always played "in the service of taste" and in "the search for beauty." You can read the review, in Italian, at italia.allaboutjazz.com.

Tonight's event marks the last scheduled event for Frisell till the end of the year, when he returns to Italy for a series of performances for Umbria Jazz. For more information, visit nonesuch.com/on-tour.