Jazz Articles about Bill Frisell

Bill Frisell: The Best of Bill Frisell: Vol. 1 - Folk Songs

by Chris May
February 18, 2009

In Robert Reisner's biographical scrapbook, Bird: The Legend of Charlie Parker (Quartet Books, 1988), one of the contributors tells how Parker, with a saxophone strung round his neck and a gorilla on his back, employed a ruse to clear a Manhattan nightclub of his fans, in order to facilitate the entrance of others waiting in line outside. (Parker was taking a percentage of each ticket sale, so the greater the club's throughput, the greater his take for the night). Every ...

Bill Frisell at the Iron Horse in Northampton, MA

by Lyn Horton
January 24, 2009

Bill Frisell Iron Horse Northampton, Massachusetts July 13, 2009

When performing alone, a musician has to work really hard, since the sound produced cannot be interwoven within the sounds other band members create. The soloist is virtually right out there in the same space as the audience. The musician's vulnerability, in turn, is unmistakable. Combine all that with the personality transmitted in the music, occasionally through the words of the performer, and there ...

Bill Frisell: History, Mystery

by Matthew Miller
September 14, 2008

For an artist rooted in sound and atmosphere, change occurs, more often than not, through Re-contextualization. Miles Davis embodied this over a career of brilliant juxtapositions and, in this way, Bill Frisell is his closest contemporary. The 58 year-old guitarist chooses collaborators carefully, employing them as foils to revolve around the swirling gravitation of his haunting, twang-inflected telecaster. This is the only way to reconcile the newness inherent in History, Mystery. The collaborators are the same; the ...

Bill Frisell: History, Mystery

by John Kelman
June 13, 2008

While guitarist Bill Frisell has continued to shape his uniquely skewed confluence of musical styles, it's been too long since he weighed in heavily on the compositional side. In recent years, the writing has most often served the playing, largely providing a context around which the guitarist and various-sized groups can explore, expand and mine. That's by no means a bad thing, and has resulted in some fine albums including Bill Frisell, Ron Carter, Paul Motian (Nonesuch, 2006) and East/West ...

Bill Frisell: All Hat

by Ian Patterson
June 2, 2008

The problem with attempting to define Americana is that it is an all-encompassing term culturally speaking. As far as music goes, Americana runs the gamut from the Grateful Dead to Willie Nelson and just about everything in between. Equally, the music of guitarist Bill Frisell is difficult to describe without embarking on a short essay, and perhaps because of his eclecticism his music defines the essence of Americana as well as any and better than most.

This original score for ...

Bill Frisell: History, Mystery

by Chris May
May 6, 2008

Over the 25 years he's been recording as a leader, guitarist Bill Frisell has worked in a multitude of settings, from gritty downtown to pastoral Americana, and with as many kinds of line-ups, from string trios through small groups to little-big bands. He's convinced in most contexts, and dug deep in many, always retaining his own voice, in which an abundant lyricism is partnered with earthy rhythmic vitality.

On the two-disc History, Mystery, Frisell shuffles the pack and ...

Bill Frisell: Pursuing Beauty

by Nenad Georgievski
November 1, 2007

There are people in this world who are blessed with the gift of constant searching for the beautiful in a world that has gone terribly wrong somewhere. Bill Frisell is someone that is evidently on a quest such as that one. Clearly one of the most original and most proficient guitarists now playing, he is acknowledged as one of the most influential and exciting jazz guitarists to emerge in the latter half of the 20th century. Noted for his unparalleled ...