Bill Frisell

Guitarist Bill Frisell (born in Baltimore in 1951 but raised in Denver) is in some ways a nostalgic figure within the improvised music of the 1990s: raised in the era of Jim Hall and Jimi Hendrix, he cannot help but embrace the technical innovations they produced, yet he remains especially attached to the humble, popular little tunes of urban folklore, to the elegies that have accompanied him since the days of Rambler and Lonesome. In the proud tradition of rock's transavantgarde, Frisell inherits the happy fantasy of mosaic and mural artists, but with the deforming genius of Cubist painters.

Born in Maryland but raised in Colorado, and a student of Jim Hall, Bill Frisell (1951) cut his teeth in Paul Motian's trio, with which he recorded six albums.

Frisell's solo debut album, In Line (ECM, 1983), highlights his guitar style, which borrows both from the steel guitar and from Hendrix's distortions. It also introduces an introverted poet of music. His roots are quite traditional: the quiet melodic excursions of Start and Godson Song (which frame the collection at the beginning and the end) are redolent of many folk and church motifs. But he revisits his roots in a futuristic and surreal way, pushing them into uncharted and unguarded psychological territory. Throughout is almost new-age music, a sequence of delicate and hypnotic patterns that achieve an almost spiritual quality. The dual-personality Smile On You has two flows of sound, one bluesy and one dreamy, with one side antagonizing but also inspiring the other. The impressionistic watercolor of In Line juxtaposes a subdued repetitive pattern with rapid-fire chords in an exotic language. The celestial glissando of Beach, the album's standout, creates a cosmic vision of whirling nebulae and supernatural beings: ambient music for astronauts.

His virtuosity also stands out in the most varied guitar duets with Vernon Reid on Smash & Scatteration (Minor Music, 1985 - Ryko, 1986), particularly those steeped in the atmosphere of the Roaring Twenties (Size 10 1/2 Sneaks, Last Nights Of Paris). His use of the synthesizer, on the other hand, is almost never successful (Burden of Dreams seems like a satire of Bach's fugues), while the more abstract experiments (Fr Fr Frisell and the long Black Light) get lost in trivialities that make Robert Fripp seem like a Beethoven of the guitar.

With his historic collaboration with Tim Berne on Theoretically (Empire, 1984 - Minor Music, 1986), Frisell definitively established himself as one of the era's most creative guitarists.

But the compositions on Rambler (ECM, 1985) for tuba (Bob Stewart) and trumpet (Kenny Wheeler), which only occasionally indulge in conventional jazz-rock themes (Tone, Resistor, and especially Strange Meeting), seem to draw more on marching bands (Music I Heard), caf� orchestras (the poignant tango of Rambler, "sung" in tandem by Frisell's slide guitar and Wheeler's trumpet), Sixties combos (the nostalgic melody of When We Go), and film soundtracks (the Gothic suspense of Wizard Of Odds) than on avant-garde jazz. The lineup, completed by Paul Motian on drums, pushes him far from the evanescent atmospheres of In Line and highlights the intricate polyphonic quality of his compositions. The first fully realized example of his romantic transgression, this album marks the beginning of one of the most brilliant careers in new jazz.

Frisell initially established himself as the Ry Cooder of new jazz, only slightly more humorous and dissonant, and decidedly less calligraphic. On the album Lookout For Hope (ECM, 1988), with Hank Roberts on cello and Joey Baron on drums, pieces parade by such as the drunken reggae waltz Little Brother Bobby, the chamber country-and-western of Handdog, the Caribbean surf of Alien Prints, in the style of the Penguin Cafe Orchestra, and above all the romantic Tex-Mex ballad Lonesome, which continues the Morricone-esque epic of Rambler. Among the album's gems are also indecipherable pastiches such as Lookout For Hope and Remedios The Beauty, in which folk and rock quotations can be detected, but as though distorted and disintegrated by a labyrinth of mirrors. His guitar style has matured into a singular "surf-jazz" that draws inflections from the instrumental rock of the 1950s and '60s and twists its semantics into passionate improvised solos, into inextricable tangles of chords thrown together at random. His duets with cellist Hank Roberts and bassist Kermit Driscoll transform the ensemble into a poly-ethnic string band. Joey Baron, a drum virtuoso no less "bohemian" than his companions, completes the most creative quartet in new jazz.

Alongside the quartet's "serious" career, Frisell alternates a semi-clandestine activity in "heavy-metal jazz" with the trio Power Tools, formed with Ronald Shannon Jackson and Melvin Gibbs, which made its debut with Strange Meeting (Island Antilles, 1987). Strange Meeting and Wadmalaw Island burn that experience into the listener's memory with Frisell's "ambient" distortions, great-grandchildren of psychedelia and cousins of new age (as also demonstrated by the gentle Cubist melody of When We Go). The affected touches, atonal antics, dreamlike twangs, and provocative timbres make the guitarist an incomparable entertainer, even when he indulges in paradoxical glissandi (Unscientific American, The President's Nap) and dispersive cacophonies (Wolf In Sheep's Clothing), capable of elevating even terrifying aberrations such as Howard Beach Memoirs into atmospheric music.

Frisell's seven lives also include one with John Scofield and Peter Erskine in the quartet Bass Desires, led by Marc Johnson, and another as sideman to aestheticizing jazz musicians such as Jan Garbarek and Eberhard Weber.

The composer reached maturity with Before We Were Born (Elektra, 1989), on which Frisell alternates techno-abrasive deliriums, as in the title track (with Arto Lindsay on guitar, Baron on drums, and Peter Scherer on keyboards, a quartet that is a contradiction in terms), with long, hilarious jam-collages of vaudeville, circus music, dance-hall swing, blues-rock, clownish dissonances, ragtime, and Zappa-esque band music, such as Some Songs And Dance (with Julius Hemphill on saxophone and Doug Wieselman on saxophone, in addition to the usual Baron and Roberts), reaching peaks of absurdity in the pyrotechnic variations on a Western theme of Hard Plains Drifter (with John Zorn directing), which race from breathtaking bluegrass to ferocious heavy metal, from a cello sonata to a dragging blues, from a Hawaiian serenade to a dissonant bacchanal, and in the no less demented and cacophonous Lone Ranger, with a nauseating solo over an industrial rhythm. Beyond the rocambolesque plots and the metalinguistic approach, Frisell is linked to Thelonious Monk by the affable humor of his melodies and the bizarre stumbles of his rhythms. Be that as it may, having abandoned the languid sketch-making of his earlier albums, Frisell turns toward frescoes of Michelangelo-like scope (Hard Plains Drifter and Some Songs And Dance) in which decades of music flash past rapidly, as if in a sonic coma.

Is That You (Elektra, 1990), featuring Wayne Horvitz on keyboards, Joey Baron on drums, and (on two pieces) Dave Hofstra on tuba and bass, is a wide-ranging survey of styles and moods, from the neoclassical resonance of Rag to the desolate post-blues reverbs and minimalist repetition of No Man's Land. Nino Rota and Frank Zappa coexist in the comic vivisections of old-fashioned motifs, whether inspired by country music (Twenty Years), marching bands (Is That You) or folk ballads (Hello Nellie). A solemn languor permeates the exotic pace of The Way Home and an optimistic melody takes hold of Half A Million. Frisell's endless postmodernist reinvention often feels like a parody, when it is in fact a nostalgic tribute to his civilization, albeit distorted by evergreen strains of neurosis and insecurity.

Frisell's guitar style has become more imaginative over the years, although his compositions are not always as entertaining as his playing. His style has become a repertory of nonsensical sound effects, a meteor shower of incoherent noises that magically coheres in the same elegant pattern.

A 1991 live performance by the trio of Frisell, Driscoll and Baron is documented by Live (Gramavision, 1995).

Where in the World (Elektra, 1991) is a much better performance by the same line-up of Lookout For Hope, and one of Frisell's masterpieces, at least in the "chamber new-age" genre. The pieces owe their elegant charm to a tension between contrasting elements: the guitar versus the strings, mild rhythms versus bursts of energy, minimalist repetition versus linear progression, abstract soundpainting versus naive melodies. Unsung Heroes feels like a psychedelic remix of sleepy dancehall music mercilessly devastated by Jimi Hendrix-ian guitar pyrotechnics. An orchestral neoclassical undercurrent pervades Rob Roy with its minimalist undulating patterns that nurture a soaring guitar prayer. The guitar sabotages as well the haunting sinister trance of Worry Doll, that would otherwise constitute the most austere venture into the realm of chamber music. Spell bridges that oneiric atmosphere with a loud verbose jazz-rock solo and an eerie exotic coda. The simple tender elegy of Child At Heart takes forever to emerge from a gentle pond of tones. Beautiful E is a brief adagio for strings. Again returns to the sleepy, nocturnal, almost "stoned" dancehall atmosphere, and Let Me In further reduces the biological functions, approaching a funereal pace and a total psychological implosion. The placid nonsense of Where In The World? is a postmodernist deconstruction of easy-listening muzak and country music that is perhaps the best candidate for aesthetic manifesto of this band.

Have A Little Faith (Elektra, 1992) is a collection of covers that wastes the talents of Don Byron, Guy Klucevsek, Kermit Driscoll and Joey Baron. It mostly highlights Frisell's passion for crossing stylistic borders, the sources ranging from folk to classical music.

This Land (Nonesuch, 1993), an album recorded by a sextet that is even less "jazz", scours the American musical subconscious for a program that displays Frisell's dexterity as much as his lack of inspiration.

It turned out that Frisell was the perfect man to score the soundtracks to the films of Buster Keaton. The High Sign One Week (Elektra, 1994) and Go West (Elektra, 1994) mirror Keaton's funny mis-adventures with a stream of consciousness that is comic and nostalgic at the same time, both unpredictable and very familiar. The latter, in particular, could be the album in which Frisell's unorthodox passion for Americana delivered the most poetic results.

After Deep Dead Blue (Nonesuch, 1995), a collaboration with pop singer Elvis Costello, later repeated by the even more awful Sweetest Punch (Decca, 1999), and American Blood/Safety In Numbers (Intuition, 1995), a collaboration with Brian Ales, Frisell's quartet with Roberts, Driscoll and Baron disbanded, and Frisell formed a new (drummerless) one. Quartet (1996), with Ron Miles on trumpet, Eyvind Kang on violin and tuba and Curtis Fowlkes on trombone, that mostly collects rearranged versions of music composed for movie soundtracks, is a little too quirky for the sake of being quirky (it was mostly composed for TV programs and movies), but still a merry-go-round of ideas.

The country-music detour of Nashville (november 1996) was another Frisell-ian tour de force and another mad incursion in the American psyche (with mandolin, banjo, dobro, bass, harmonica and Robin Holcomb's vocals).

Angel Song (ECM, 1997), a collaboration with Kenny Wheeler, Lee Konitz and Dave Holland, Gone Just Like A Train (Nonesuch, 1997), a more conventional no-nonsense guitar trio, Songs We Know (Nonesuch, 1998), a collaboration with pianist Fred Hersch, and Good Dog Happy Man (Nonesuch, 1999), another revisionist country album (with Wayne Horvitz augmenting the guitar-bass-drums trio and the first version of Monroe), were all minor works.

Frisell played all of the instruments himself on Ghost Town (Nonesuch, 2000), which was therefore his first "solo" and his best album in a while. Not only does this format allow him to showcase his supernatural guitar technique, but the majority of the album boasts original compositions of artistic depth, not mere jokes or tributes. The delicate tapestry Tell Your Ma Tell Your Pa is grounded in the countryside and in the province, away from the bustling metropolis of jazz and rock music. And that's where the album remains for the tender domestic lullaby Ghost Town Poem For Eva and the nostalgic evocation of Winter Always Turns To Spring.
Frisell's oneiric spaces are explored in Variation On A Theme, permeated with minimalist repetition and neoclassical grace, in What A World (the sonic standout of the album), whose languid dissonant tones evoke a state of madness, in Outlaw, a muffled spaghetti-western theme, Frisell cannot and does not compete with the domestic warmth of Leo Kottke and the transcendental depth of John Fahey. In the solo acoustic guitar genre he brings out the most personal and private facets of his art that he somehow shunned in the collaborative efforts. This is a cathartic and adult work. His poignant soliloquy does not always work, but when it works it does reach deep inside in the same manner that the great romantic composers achieved.

On the deceptively ambitious Blues Dream (Nonesuch, 2001), played by a septet, Frisell reinvented the roots that he had merely been aping with his covers. This time the pieces are all original, despite the fact that they all "sound" like deconstructed standards. This process ends up yielding one of his most atmospheric works. Blues Dream could be the overture to an opera by Tom Waits, and Where Do We Go? returns to one of Frisell's trademark genres: the slow, nocturnal, romantic dancehall dirge. The subdued incursion in Frisell's subconscious continues with the hard-rocking and quasi-boogie Ron Carter, the calm evocative rural Outlaws, the psychedelic trance of Greg Leisz, the warped big-band theme Things Will Never Be The Same that explore different facets of Frisell's "blues". Oddly enough, many of the pieces are barely sketched, even though the septet has the skills to do much more with Frisell's ideas. The longer What Do We Do?, however, proves the point: the slow crescendo towards an anthemic refrain doesn't achieve much.

Bill Frisell with Dave Holland and Elvin Jones (Nonesuch, 2001) is a mediocre collaboration.

Frisell formed The Willies (Nonesuch, 2002) with banjo player Danny Barnes (of the Bad Livers) and bassist Keith Lowe to play his version of Grisman's jazzgrass.

Despite the impressive international cast, The Intercontinentals (Nonesuch, 2003) is another failure, but pushes Frisell's explorations beyond America.

Despite the number and level of collaborations, which includes the Sex Mob quartet (Tony Scherr, Kenny Wollesen and, although less utilized, Steven Bernstein and Briggan Krauss), the 858 Strings (violinist Jenny Scheinman, violist Eyvind Kang, cellist Hank Roberts), as well as trombonist Curtis Fowlkes, keyboardist Adam Dorn and percussionist Don Alias, Unspeakable (Nonesuch, 2004) sounds, at best, like mellow background muzak (soul melodies, string section). The main instigator is probably producer and sampler Hal Willner, who adorned Frisell's compositions with funk grooves and sonic inserts pulled from a vast library of recordings. Petra Haden & Bill Frisell (2005) was a collaboration with That Dog's vocalist.

Richter 858 (Songlines, 2005) is a soundtrack composed (in 2002) for an art exhibition, and one of his best albums in a while, scored for guitar and string trio. The first movement opens with wildly dissonant interplay but soon achieves an almost trancey balance between the various voices. The voices lose their center of mass in the second movement, resulting in disjointed cacophony. A melody surfaces in the third movement, passed from one instrument to the other. The fourth movement (the album's centerpiece) begins with slow weeping extended tones but then the strings intone a dance-like pattern against the noises of the guitar, and their counterpoint soon spirals out of control. The jovial atmosphere spills over into the fifth movement, another dance-like piece halfway between Stravinsky's Histoire du Soldat and Berlioz's Symphony Fantastique. The sequence is odd, as the massive, swarming drones of the sixth movement and the guitar effects imagine a technological nightmare that does not quite follow from the previous two movements. It is the seventh that returns to the flavor of medieval street dance with even more passion. There is much to absorb, but probably also much that could have been pruned away.

Frisell/Carter/Motian (september 2005) was a collaboration with Ron Carter and Paul Motian.

The double-CD East West (Nonesuch, 2005) documents (terrible) live performances by Frisell in different trio line-ups.

Floratone (2007) was actually a producer's album: producers Lee Townsend and Tucker Martine manipulated some live jams by guitarist Bill Frisell and drummer Matt Chamberlain to produce ambient noir jazz chamber music.

Derived from a multimedia collaboration with artist Jim Woodring ("Mysterio Sympatico", 2002) and from a television show ("Stories from the Heart of the Land", 2007), the double-disc History Mystery (Nonesuch, 2008) featured expanded instrumentation (around his veteran string section of violinist Jenny Scheinman, violist Eyvind Kang and cellist Hank Roberts), a more relaxed charm, and an eclectic mix of world-music, blues, folk, cabaret and jazz. The three variations of Monroe (originally introduced on Good Dog Happy Man) are the only major example of Frisell's oneiric chamber music. The ensemble shines at performing smooth fluid "orchestral" themes that evoke old-fashioned street bands (Probability Cloud), plunges into one bloody blues-jazz jam (Struggle Pt. 2) and mauls the agonizing Waltz for Baltimore. The covers include Lee Konitz's Sub-Conscious Lee, Traore's Baba Drame and Sam Cooke's A Change Is Gonna Come. Like it is often the case with Frisell's work, may of the best ideas are dispersed among miniature pieces that are not allowed to grow and prosper.

Frisell collaborated with veteran jazz guitarist Jim Hall on Dialogues (1998) and Hemispheres (2008).

Disfarmer (march 2007) is a "jazz opera" of sorts and one of his most accessible albums ever. The lazy, anemic Disfarmer Theme, the cryptic and suspenseful Focus, the veiled country music of the otherworldly trance of Shutter Dream and the gentle emptiness Lost Again Dark recycle ideas that Frisell has better explored in previous albums, although here they are framed in classical elegance. For a moment the bluesy Drink harks back to his roots, but the abstract meditation of Think better represents the real Frisell of this album. A plaintive folk melody surfaces in I Am Not A Farmer but the three-part impressionistic fresco of Arkansas is Frisell's real idea of a tribute to the province. After a Monet-like stroll in Natural Light, Frisell ends the album with the melancholy meditation of Did You See Him?
Overall, the need to narrate a story detracts from his hyper-fusion, that here is reduced to an elegant parade of post-folk cliches. Gone is also his sense of humor, that probably helped make his guitar playing so eccentric. Frisell sounds less interested in guitar invention and more in assembling the right timbres for his scores. Unfortunately, he often sounds absent-minded, as if he didn't quite focus on the music that is shaping up under his nose. Nonetheless, the general atmosphere is quite magical, and the brief pieces provide an opportunity for pointillistic soundpainting at a less granular level.

The Beautiful Dreamers, a trio with Eyvind Kang on viola and Rudy Royston on drums, debuted with Beautiful Dreamers (april 2010), mostly a revision of old Frisell compositions plus covers of some classics. The emphasis was on Frisell's guitar style, a style that sounds like anything except a guitar.

Frisell scored the soundtrack for Leonard Farlinger's All Hat and recorded Lagrimas Mexicanas with Brazilian songwriter Vinicius Cantuaria, the vocalist of Frisell's The Intercontinentals.

The chamber program of Richter 858 was continued on Sign of Life (october 2010) , his second recording with the string quartet 858 Quartet, containing the ballad It's A Long Story.

All We Are Saying (april 2010) was a tribute to John Lennon.

Bill Frisell's Floratone returned with II (Savoy, 2012).

Silent Comedy (december 2012) contains brief improvised solos.

In 2013 Bill Frisell also debuted the multimedia work Allen Ginsberg's Kaddish.

Big Sur (march 2013) combines Beautiful Dreamers and the 858 Quartet: Jenny Scheinman (violin), Eyvind Kang (viola), Hank Roberts (cello) and Rudy Royston (drums).

Just Listen (november 2008) documents live duets between Joey Baron on drums and Bill Frisell on guitar.

Guitar in the Space Age(Okeh, 2014) is a tribute to rock music of the 1960s.

When You Wish Upon A Star (Okeh, 2016) was a tribute of sorts to television and film soundtracks.

The quartet formed in 2014 with Andrew Cyrille (drums), Richard Teitelbaum (piano and synthesizer) and Ben Street (contrabass) debuted with The Declaration Of Musical Independence (july 2014), mostly composed by Frisell.

A sextet with Jakob Bro (guitar), Lee Konitz (alto and soprano saxes), Jason Moran (piano), Thomas Morgan (bass) and Andrew Cyrille (drums) recorded Bro's compositions on Taking Turns (march 2014).

Frisell also played in George Lloyd's Marvels, that released I Long To See You (april 2015) and Masters Of War (november 2016).

Credited to trumpeter Ron Miles, I Am A Man (december 2016) featured Bill Frisell (guitar), Thomas Morgan (bass), Brian Blade (drums) and Jason Moran (piano).

Music Is (august 2017) is a solo album performed on guitars, loops, bass, ukelele and music boxes.

Andrew Cyrille (drums), Wadada Leo Smith (trumpet) and Bill Frisell (guitar) recorded Lebroba (july 2017), including Smith's 17-minute Turiya.

Frisell also contributed to Rainbow Sign (summer 2018), credited to trumpeter Ron Miles, with Jason Moran (piano), Thomas Morgan (bass) and Brian Blade (drums).

Ches Smith's Interpret It Well (october 2020) featured Craig Taborn (piano), Mat Maneri (viola) and Bill Frisell (electric guitar).

Owl Song (2023) was trumpeter Ambrose Akinmusire's debut in a trio with guitarist Bill Frisell and drummer Herlin Riley.

Bill Frisell (electric guitar), Kit Downes (pipe organ) and Andrew Cyrille (drums) recorded Breaking The Shell (may 2022) in a church.

A trio with Thomas Morgan (bass) and Rudy Royston (drums) recorded the double-disc Orchestras, which is two albums in one: the first one (september 2022) adds the 60-piece Brussels Philharmonic, conducted by Alexander Hanson and the second one (january 2022) adds the 11-piece Umbria Jazz Orchestra, under the musical direction of Manuele Morbidini. The three-LP version adds seven more pieces.

Breaking The Shell (may 2022) documents a session with pipe organist Kit Downes and drummer Andrew Cyrille.

Guitarists Bill Frisell, Julian Lage & Nels Cline, Carmen Staaf on piano, Tony Sherr on bass, Kenny Wollesen on drums and violinist and singer Jenny Scheinman recorded All Species Parade (february 2023), credited to Scheinman.

In My Dreams (april 2025) documents a sextet with Hank Roberts (cello), Eyvind Kang (viola), US Jenny Scheinman (violin), Claudia Engelhart (live sounds), Thomas Morgan (bass) and Rudy Royston (drums).