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Bill Frisell

Guitar in the Space Age

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The Making of Guitar in the Space Age
Bill Frisell: Guitar In The Space Age! - Nevers D'Jazz Festival 2014
1 Baja
2 Bryant's Boogie
3 Cannonball Rag
4 Lift Off
5 Messin' with the Kid
6 Pipeline
7 Rebel Rouser
8 Reflections from the Moon
9 Rumble
10 Surfer Girl
11 Telstar
12 The Shortest Day
13 Tired of Waiting for You
14 Turn, Turn, Turn
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"May you never hear surf music again." – Jimi Hendrix

"Space is the place." – Sun Ra

Just when you think you've got guitarist-composer Bill Frisell all figured out, confident in your expectations, this American original shakes things up with a heretofore unexpected glimpse into those layers of consciousness which inform his rootsy, inclusive, oh so personal style of musical outreach. Because while Bill Frisell is capable of routinely navigating the most harrowing ascents into the outer reaches of the improvisational Ionosphere without once ever flinching, there emerge at regular intervals suggestions of something more childlike and elemental; a sensibility which revels in expressions of earnest, unadorned directness-the aesthetic poetry of an impressionistic painter who is unafraid to distill things down to their most folkish, heartfelt essence. 

  • Bill Frisell w/trio set for 'The Egg.' The guitarist interviews with Albany Times Union
    Posted At: November 12, 2024
    Albany Times Union's R.J. DeLuke writes….Guitarist Bill Frisell starts with jazz, but wanders full music spectrum. It’s not enough to say he's is a brilliant guitarist, an influence in music and a hero to other guitarists — even other great ones. He is that, but more.He’s one of the great stylists, and has the ability to move across any genre, which he freely does. Frisell can eat up fusion music, carve up ...

  • Frisell, Cyrille, Downes work the organ/guitar/drums structure on 'Breaking The Shell' / SOMETHING ELSE!
    Posted At: October 25, 2024
    SOMETHING ELSE! writes….The organ/guitar/drums structure usually conjures up recollections of Jimmy Smith and Big John Patton. Enter Bill Frisell, Andrew Cyrille and Kit Downes with a completely novel take for their new album Breaking The Shell (Red Hook Records). But to go ‘novel’ they went way back to medieval times, because the organ isn’t a Hammond B-3 but rather a big ol’ pipe organ ensconced in a chur...

  • The breadth, quality, and beauty of 'Orchestras' holds Bill Frisell's dream fulfilled / The Big Takeover
    Posted At: April 19, 2024
    Bill Frisell’s career as a guitarist and composer has spanned more than 40 years and many celebrated recordings, whose catalog has been cited by Downbeat as "the best recorded output of the decade."In recent years, Frisell has forged a distinctive and fruitful collaboration with the Blue Note label, releasing HARMONY, Valentine and FOUR to great acclaim."Frisell has had a lot of practice putting high concep...

  • Bill Frisell performs one of the most creative and interesting concerts at Indiana's 'Center for the Performing Arts' / NUVO
    Posted At: October 26, 2023
    Bill Frisell’s career as a guitarist and composer has spanned more than 40 years and many celebrated recordings, whose catalog has been cited by Downbeat as "the best recorded output of the decade." In recent years, Frisell has forged a distinctive and fruitful collaboration with the Blue Note label, releasing HARMONY, Valentine and FOUR to great acclaim."Frisell has had a lot of practice putting high conce...

  • Bill Frisell and an all-star band recreate 'Amarcord Nino Rota' at New York's Roulette theatre / jazzwise
    Posted At: April 17, 2023
    Andrey Henkin assesses a large-scale jazz reworking of the revered Italian composer’s music as performed at New York’s Roulette theatrejazzwise writes….In 1981, producer Hal Willner undertook the first of his many tribute albums: Amarcord Nino Rota, a celebration of the Italian composer (1911-79), best known for his scores to films by compatriot Federico Fellini between 1952-78 and Francis Ford Coppola's Th...

  • 'Four' stands among the tallest in Bill Frisell's storied catalog / glideMagazine
    Posted At: November 8, 2022
    glideMagazine's Jim Hynes….Guitarist Bill Frisell, on his third recording for Blue Note, expands the quiet, explorative music he delivered on 2020’s Valentine through a much different instrumental configuration. Much of the music is about loss, the deep ties of friendship, and a few that point to renewal. The music leans far more into contemporary jazz than into the kind of folk and Americana we associate w...

  • Philip Watson's Bill Frisell biography: 'Beautiful Dreamer' opens wide and allows you into the man in full / JazzTimes
    Posted At: May 24, 2022
    A review of the Irish-based journalist's biography on the Baltimore-born guitaristJazzTimes - A.D. AMOROSI writes… Funny an Irish-based journalist who’s written about James Joyce’s Ulysses, wounded British soldiers, and Nick Cave is the man making the auspicious title claim of Bill Frisell, the Baltimore-born guitarist tied to jazz but equally respondent to folk, fusion, classical, and whatever Elvis Costel...

  • Nobody plays guitar like Bill Frisell / The New Yorker
    Posted At: May 16, 2022
    A visit with the legendary musician at his home in Brooklyn.The New Yorker's Paul Elie writes…“It’s, like, God, I still feel like I’m barely even scratching . . . just barely starting,” Frisell said. “That’s the nature of music: it just doesn’t end.” Bill Frisell owns sixty-three guitars, according to his biographer. Both parts of that sentence are surprising. It’s surprising that Frisell, whose records are...

  • Bill Frisell wins JazzTimes: Critics Poll for 'Best Guitarist' and 'Best Electric/Jazz-Rock/Contemporary Group/Artist'
    Posted At: February 1, 2021

    For this annual companion poll to our Top 50 Critics' Picks, our regular contributors participated in this survey based on our yearly Readers' Poll. Contributors were asked to focus on artists' achievements during 2020 rather than assessing entire careers. Bill Frisell won for 'Best Guitarist' and 'Best Electric/Jazz-Rock/Contemporary Group/Artist.' Bill Frisell's career as a guitaris...

  • Watch Bill Frisell's 'Keep Your Eyes Open' / udiscovermusic.
    Posted At: July 19, 2020

    Acclaimed guitarist Bill Frisell has released "Keep Your Eyes Open," the second single to be revealed from his forthcoming Blue Note album,   Valentine, featuring his trio with bassist Thomas Morgan and drummer Rudy Royston. Mixing originals new and old, jazz standards, traditional songs, and covers, Frisell's new album ‘Valentine' is set for release on August 14. "Keep Your Eyes Open," wh...

  • Bill Frisell Trio was maybe all-time best RIJF show / Rochester City Newspaper
    Posted At: June 23, 2019

    It's a stunning moment when an artist allows us inside his or her head, to that lifetime-retrospective rattling around in the brain. But that's what happened during the second show from the Bill Frisell Trio on Saturday night at the Temple Building Theater. This is the 18th Rochester International Music Festival. I've covered them all, and I would never pick an all-time best show. But this one would cert...

  • Bill Frisell to perform in Vietnam for first time / Vietnam +
    Posted At: May 23, 2019

    Guitarist Bill Frisell, widely known as one of the most versatile players in jazz history, will perform for the first time in Vietnam at the "Bill Frisell: Summer on Guitar" concert which will take place on May 26 at the Soul Live Project Complex in Ho Chi Minh City's district 3. The concert features Thomas Morgan on bass, Rudy Royston on drums, and Bill Frisell on guitar. The audience will experience a ...

  • Bill Frisell chats with Guitar.com
    Posted At: May 2, 2019

    The esteemed guitarist on being himself, letting go of theory, and why he's happy to blur the genre lines. Bill Frisell might well be one of the most-recorded guitarists of his generation. Possessing one of the most recognisably bell-like tones you'll ever hear, he's been lauded as among the most versatile players in jazz history. With the guitarist soon to hit the road following the recent release of hi...

  • Public Radio Tulsa celebrates march birthdays, among other things
    Posted At: March 30, 2019

    Tune in for the next broadcast of All This Jazz, starting at 9pm on Saturday the 30th, right here on KWGS-FM / Public Radio Tulsa. It'll be three hours of can't-miss modern jazz -- all of it introduced, chosen, contextualized, and presented by an actual person (rather than a robot)! In the third and thematic hour of our show, our theme will be March Birthdays. Thus we'll hear from Norah J...

  • Bill Frisell returns for Give-a-Jam / Louisville Eccentric Observer
    Posted At: March 20, 2019

    Renowned jazz guitarist and composer Bill Frisell has a history of helping the homeless. He once did a string of shows supporting the progressive, Seattle-based, homeless advocacy newspaper Real Change. Now, Frisell is returning to Louisville for 2019's first Give-a-Jam, a benefit concert series for the Louisville Coalition for the Homeless. He told LEO Weekly when an opportunity comes "to actually help ...

  • JAZZIZ wishes Bill Frisell 'happy birthday' with SONG OF THE DAY
    Posted At: March 18, 2019

    Bill Frisell, whose career as a pathbreaking guitarist spans more than 40 years, was born on this day (March 18) in Baltimore, Maryland, in 1951. With more than 35 albums as a leader, Frisell has become one of the leading voices in jazz guitar, with a style that merges modern jazz with elements of folk, early rock and roll, country music, bluegrass, Americana and the avant-garde. Today's Song of the Day ...

  • Bill Frisell readies four-night residency at Berkeley's Freight & Salvage / San Francisco Chronicle
    Posted At: February 25, 2019

    Bill Frisell contains multitudes, but it's not often that several of his bandstand personae get to hang out in the same building. With music as variable as the weather, the protean jazz guitarist seems to introduce a new band or project every month. But most of the time, he's on the move with one ensemble focusing on a particular body of work. In a welcome change of pace, he plays a four-night reside...

  • New Bill Frisell, Cuong Vu collaboration reflects a cross-continental sensibility / popMATTERS
    Posted At: October 2, 2018

    In 2007, trumpeter and composer Cuong Vu moved from New York to Seattle, where he teaches music at the University of Washington. Bill Frisell, the versatile guitarist, made the same move years before, and he just returned to New York recently. But the two overlapped on the west coast for over decade-along with bassist Luke Bergman and drummer Ted Poor. Change in the Air is the hippest of their collaborat...

  • John Zorn brings his multiconcert marathon to ARTIC, pairing 12 ensembles with iconic artworks / Chicago Reader
    Posted At: September 1, 2018

    In recent years the sprawling variety and prolificacy of works by musician, composer, and community force John Zorn, have been showcased in appropriately ambitious, multiconcert marathon events presented all around the world with enormous casts of musicians. Last month I experienced one of the largest such efforts when Jazz em Agosto, in Lisbon, Portugal, turned over its entire ten-day lineup to Zorn's m...

  • Watch Bill Frisell discuss fender mustangs in 'Carmine Street Guitars' trailer / Deadline Hollywood
    Posted At: August 31, 2018

    Bill Frisell, a member of John Zorn's Naked City and the man who provided the music for the TV version of Gary Larson's The Far Side, talks Fender Mustang guitars and The Astronauts in this exclusive clip of doc Carmine Street Guitars, which premieres next week in Venice. The doc, which has its world premiere in Venice on September 3 before airing in Toronto and New York, was instigated by filmmaker and ...

  • Hear Paul Simon's new version of 'Rene And Georgette Magritte With Their Dog After the War' / RollingStone
    Posted At: August 30, 2018

    Paul Simon adds lush orchestral layers to "Rene and Georgette Magritte With Their Dog After the War" in a new version of the 1983 track. New York chamber ensemble yMusic offers textural elegance to the rerecorded take, which appears on the singer-songwriter's upcoming 14th LP, In the Blue Light out September 7th. 10 new versions of overlooked pieces from throughout Simon's catalog. Guitarist Bill Frisell...

  • Mary Halvorson and Bill Frisell team for Johnny Smith tribute / Reverb Q&A
    Posted At: August 22, 2018

    Guitarists Mary Halvorson and Bill Frisell have two of the most distinctive musical voices of their respective generations. Each has found a rare and unparalleled way of approaching the instrument, with such unique approaches to melody, harmony, and their respective sounds, and it's no surprise that they've both inspired the future of guitar music. At the impetus of composer and Tzadik records pr...

  • Skuli Sverrisson, Bill Frisell and more on WBGO's 'Take Five'
    Posted At: August 13, 2018

    Look Sharp with NATE CHINEN and New Music on 'Take Five,' featuring Christian Sands, Mark Turner, Bill Frisell and more.  Newvelle Records, the audiophile subscription vinyl label, is now into its third season. For those who have the proper resources - a working turntable, and some discretionary funds - it's a fabulous fount of new music that can't be heard any other way. The latest...

  • Carmine Street Guitars documentary set for world premier at Venice Film Festival / Variety
    Posted At: July 26, 2018

    New documentary "Carmine Street Guitars" will have its world premier at the Venice Film Festival. The Ron Mann-directed film chronicles a week in the life of Greenwich Village guitar maker Rick Kelly and his apprentice Cindy Hulej. Kelly's method is unique: he builds his guitars out of wood salvaged from old New York City buildings constructed in the 1800s or as he calls it, "the bones of old New Yor...

  • Bill Frisell Trio set for Boulder Theater / Westword
    Posted At: June 13, 2018

    When guitarist Bill Frisell, who grew in Denver and is now based in Brooklyn, was beginning his career as a professional musician in the early '80s, he played a solo show for the first time and told himself he never wanted to do it again. But the next year he did another solo gig and one the year after that, and it gradually became easier. The chameleonic Frisell clearly knows how to get inside whate...

  • Set for Boulder Theatre, Bill Frisell chats with KGNU
    Posted At: June 13, 2018

    Almost every day, Bill Frisell gets up in the morning, has some coffee, and writes music. At this point, there are piles and piles and piles of single pages of staff paper filled with his graceful script. "I don't know where the melodies come from," says Frisell. "I try not to judge anything and just let them be." Frisell's mantra, or motto so to speak, is, "Music is Good" – a statement said t...

  • Bill Frisell indeed sounds like no other. Highlights from the Discover Jazz Festival / BurlingtonFreePress.com
    Posted At: June 11, 2018

    p.p1 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Helvetica Neue'; color: #606060} Bill Frisell, left, talks with William Ellis, professor in the music department at St. Michael's College, during a "Meet the Artist" session in FlynnSpace as part of the Burlington Discover Jazz Festival on June 7, 2018.  An audience member mentioned how unique the guitar giant's tone is, and that he sou...

  • Bill Frisell releases spellbinding solo guitar album / Chicago Reader
    Posted At: June 1, 2018

    Few musicians have built as distinctive a sound world as guitarist Bill Frisell. Though he's ostensibly a jazz guitarist, since the early 80s he's funneled a wide variety of influences and ideas from country, rock, noise, and various international traditions into an aesthetic as American as anything forged by Sousa, Presley, or Copland. Though specific projects such as film scores or songbooks constantly...

  • Bill Frisell - Music IS sincere guitar artistry / 91.5KIOS: Last Call 'Pick of the Week'
    Posted At: May 22, 2018

    Guitarist Bill Frisell is back with another album, and this one is a solo date. Frisell is a one-man band with electric and acoustic guitars, loops, bass, ukulele and music boxes. He roams freely through his influences, which range widely from country, to folk & rock & jazz. The satisfying results will please almost any listener who is interested in sincere guitar artistry. Highlights of disc inc...

  • Frisell,Morgan,Royston, set for NAJS: summer jazz kickoff / 91.3KUAF
    Posted At: May 22, 2018

    Bill Frisell Trio featuring Thomas Morgan & Rudy Royston June 14 will kick off the 91.3KUAF - jazz summer concert series. This concert is presented by the Northwest Arkansas Jazz Society and Walton Arts Center as part of the 20th season of Summer Jazz Concerts and the Artosphere Festival. On Frisell, The New York Times wrote; "It's hard to find a more fruitful meditation on American mus...

  • Bill Frisell Trio, set for 'Sound,' chats with 103.3 - The Duluth Alternative
    Posted At: May 17, 2018

    Grammy award-winning guitarist Bill Frisell brings his Trio, featuring Tony Scherr & Kenny Wollesen to 'Sound' in Duluth MN on May 18. Frisell explores the musical possibilities of his own multi-faceted compositions and time-honored jazz and folk songs with this ever-evolving constellation of extraordinary musicians. Their diverse backgrounds and talents provide a wide-open climate to interpr...

  • Bill Frisell knows what Music IS / NWADemocrat & Gazette
    Posted At: April 22, 2018

    I've interviewed four American presidents. Norman Mailer. Madonna. Tom Cruise. They can work out well and make great pieces, but I hardly ever get excited about doing interviews. Because I was talking about Bill Frisell. The occasion was a show he was scheduled to play at Little Rock's Ron Robinson Theater -- a show that wound up being canceled because of bad weather. So while I talked to Fri...

  • Bill Frisell 'Music IS' could also be titled - 'Music Frisell Is' / 88.9KUCI - Irvine
    Posted At: April 16, 2018

    Certain artists play themselves through their instruments. In a strange way their instruments are peripheral to their performances and their compositions are vehicles for their passing humours. In these sixteen short pieces for electric guitar and effects Frisell presents a summation of a musical and more urgently a personal vision. Like Bach's "Well Tempered Clavier" or Coltrane's "A Love Suprem...

  • Bill Frisell releases long overdue solo album / Jazz Weekly
    Posted At: April 16, 2018

    Guitarist Bill Frisell releases a long overdue solo album, collecting material ranging from his earliest albums to fresh new material. Because of his experimentation with sounds and colors, any return to an "old" song is bound to have radical re-interpretations, and Frisell doesn't disappoint. His effects on "In Line" and "The Rambler" from his first ECM album, as well as his return to "Ron Carter" featu...

  • Bill Frisell - Music IS...good / Something Else! Reviews
    Posted At: April 13, 2018

    Bill Frisell recently released Music IS, a solo studio project, via Okeh / Sony Music Masterworks – but it almost had a slightly different title. Frisell's mantra is "music is good," a saying which comes from his banjo-playing friend Danny Barnes. "That is something that I can say is always true. It is so perfect. Everything I need to know is that phrase," Frisell says. "I almost called the album t...

  • Bill Frisell releases long-awaited solo album / jazztrail
    Posted At: April 9, 2018

    Venerated guitarist Bill Frisell, one of the most emblematic figures of Americana and folk-jazz, releases his long-awaited solo album, Music Is. The 16-track recording includes brand new compositions and old material irresistibly dressed with the sonic possibilities of our times. In addition to the electric and acoustic guitars, Frisell plays ukulele, electronic loops, bass, and music boxes, in a lush fu...
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