Bill Frisell Richter 858 (2005) Sacd

Two years after issuing his acclaimed trio album Valentine, Grammy Award-winning guitarist and composer Bill Frisell returns with 'Four', a stunning meditation on loss, renewal, and those mysterious inventions of friendship. Frisell's third album for Blue Note Records since signing with the label in 2019 proffers new interpretations of previously recorded originals as well as nine new tunes. The session brings together artists of independent spirits and like minds: Blue Note stablemates Gerald Clayton on piano and Johnathan Blake on drums, and longtime collaborator Greg Tardy on saxophone, clarinet, and bass clarinet. 'This combination of people had been floating around in the back of my mind since before the pandemic,' says the Brooklyn-based artist.

Small Town presents guitarist Bill Frisell and bassist Thomas Morgan in a program of duets, the poetic chemistry of their playing captured live at New York s hallowed Village Vanguard. Small Town sees Frisell and Morgan pay homage to jazz elder Lee Konitz with his Subconscious Lee, and there are several country/blues-accented Frisell originals, including the hauntingly melodic title track. The duo caps the set with an inimitable treatment of John Barry's famous James Bond theme "Goldfinger".

Bill Frisell is one of the leading and most innovative guitarists of our time. Although his work is steeped in jazz, his music includes characteristics of rock, country and bluegrass, among various other styles. For "Guitar in the Space Age!", guitarist and composer Bill Frisell mines the catalog of guitar-based music from the 1950s and 1960s that first inspired him to pick up the instrument.

I’ve never been at a session like the one that we had in June of 2017 with Skúli Sverrisson and Bill Frisell. Sometimes you can really sense a connection between two musicians, some fitting together or a frisson of common experience and spontaneous invention. But this was of another order—a quiet and profound communion. With Skúli and Bill there’s a shared internal language—a sense of inevitable logic—hypnotizing and surreal.

Charles Lloyd at age 84 remains as spiritually relevant, contemporarily focused, and prolific as ever. Lloyd has played in many configurations including the standard drum-piano-bass-sax quartet but also in quintets that include both piano and guitar as well as his famous quintet, The Marvels, that features two guitarists, one of whom, the renowned guitarist Bill Frisell, along with Frisell’s go-to bassist Thomas Morgan, form the first of three trios in a series of recordings featuring three different trios that Lloyd is releasing in 2022. Lloyd has constantly searched for new contexts in which to deliver his improvised solos and has worked rather regularly with most of the musicians that comprise his vision of the three trios, which interestingly have a guitarist as the only instrumental constant. The second will feature guitarist Anthony Wilson and pianist Gerald Clayton while the third will install guitarist Julian Lage and percussionist Zakir Hussain.

One of the classic lineups in jazz is the organ trio—a unit that typically consists of Hammond organ, guitar or sax, and drums. The sound associated with this tradition is often marked by a joyously flowing funkiness. But the group on Breaking the Shell is a different kind of organ trio, one that plays minutely-textured free jazz. The excellent release features guitarist Bill Frisell, drummer Andrew Cyrille, and—here's the instrumental gamechanger—Kit Downes on pipe organ. Opener "May 4th" quietly pulls you in with Downes's intriguing melodic fragments, Frisell's lyrical guitar, and Cyrille's brushed drums. The result is diffuse, but nevertheless hangs together, in part because of the effective use of quavering drones. In a way, "May 4th" is simply an interesting sketch, a slice of eerie ambience, but it also offers a glimpse of the inventive timbres and playing to come.

In When You Wish Upon a Star, guitarist Bill Frisell draws upon the classic film and television music we have heard on screen and how it shapes and informs our emotional relationships to what we see. Frisell, whose own music has been featured in major motion pictures like Finding Forrester and The Million Dollar Hotel performs with singer Petra Haden, violist Eyvind Kang, bassist Thomas Morgan, and drummer Rudy Royston.

One of the classic lineups in jazz is the organ trio—a unit that typically consists of Hammond organ, guitar or sax, and drums. The sound associated with this tradition is often marked by a joyously flowing funkiness. But the group on Breaking the Shell is a different kind of organ trio, one that plays minutely-textured free jazz. The excellent release features guitarist Bill Frisell, drummer Andrew Cyrille, and—here's the instrumental gamechanger—Kit Downes on pipe organ. Opener "May 4th" quietly pulls you in with Downes's intriguing melodic fragments, Frisell's lyrical guitar, and Cyrille's brushed drums. The result is diffuse, but nevertheless hangs together, in part because of the effective use of quavering drones. In a way, "May 4th" is simply an interesting sketch, a slice of eerie ambience, but it also offers a glimpse of the inventive timbres and playing to come.