Bill on Order

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.

Recorded at the Village Vanguard in 1961, shortly before Scott LaFaro's death, Waltz for Debby is the second album issued from that historic session, and the final one from that legendary trio that also contained drummer Paul Motian. While the Sunday at the Village Vanguard album focused on material where LaFaro soloed prominently, this is far more a portrait of the trio on those dates. Evans chose the material here, and, possibly, in some unconscious way, revealed on these sessions - and the two following LaFaro's death (Moonbeams and How My Heart Sings!) - a different side of his musical personality that had never been displayed on his earlier solo recordings or during his tenures with Miles Davis and George Russell: Evans was an intensely romantic player, flagrantly emotional, and that is revealed here in spades on tunes such as "My Foolish Heart" and "Detour Ahead"…

Deep growling drones get this sixty two minute epic underway. It really sounds like the beast from the deep or some alien from outer space. Its dark ambient picture music of the very highest order. There's something out there to get you in every dark corner. In the ninth minute extra detail is added in the form of some faint vocal effects with a slight metallic quality to them giving a brighter edge to the sonic landscape. Ghostly wails are heard at about the fifteen minute mark making the whole proceedings seem even spookier. Around the eighteenth minute more detail starts to be added , oh so slowly. Its as if we are entering some subtly different area of space, the atmosphere is still dark but things seem sparser and maybe slightly less threatening…