This month: Bill Frisell
Radical, cerebral, eccentric: any number of epithets apply to the US guitarist Bill Frisell. It’s maybe why his idiosyncratic approach draws appreciation from such a wide range of listeners and fellow artists.
Across a career spanning 40-plus years, Frisell has played with the biggest names in jazz, led groundbreaking small groups with newcomers and brought his oblique sound to all manner of contemporary music projects.
The band format on Four, his third album since joining Blue Note, is characteristically odd for a guitarist – having piano (Gerald Clayton), drums (Johnathan Blake) and reeds (Greg Tardy): ‘It was about the personalities more than the instruments, about the way the guys think...,’ he explains. ‘It wasn’t until later I thought, “Oh s***, there’s not a bass player!” But I had to follow through with the initial instinct.’ However, the resulting programme of 13 original chamber miniatures, derived from spontaneous orchestration, is a masterpiece.
Frisell discovered the appeal of ‘stepping off the edge’ working with one of the giants of jazz early in his career: ‘I got to tour with [pianist] Mccoy Tyner. I’d met him but I didn’t really know him. So I called him to say, “Hi, I’m wondering what we might do.” All he said was, “Well, it’s not the army! We’re just going to have fun!”’
Frisell was recently reunited with his earliest mentor, Mike Gibbs, when the 85-year-old arranger organised a symphonic concert with the Brussels Philharmonic for Frisell’s gigging trio: ‘Again, I’m so lucky. People aren’t so much asking for “guitar” as my sound or my personality. People trust me to be myself in whatever the context is and I love doing that.’
It’s hard to guess what Frisell might do next, even knowing what he’s listening to right now. The quirky American roots singer Valerie June is on his playlist, along with experimental multiinstrumentalist Tyshawn Sorey. But Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn’s music is something that he keeps returning to – and finding more in it: ‘It’s a lifelong, never-ending goldmine of having my mind blown!’
‘People trust me to be myself in whatever the context is and I love doing that.’