Bill Frisell and the artful power of improvisation

A large crowd (and bar crew) sit in rapt attention as The Bill Frisell Trio casts its evocative spell, in the aptly atmospheric and light-blessed concert space Vivarium, on Tuesday evening. All photos by Dan Ojeda, Pabst Theater Group.

Having awoken after an evocative Bill Frisell Trio concert, a psychic analogue arose, like a forgotten fairy tale carrying you to yonder realms, enchanted yet vivid fantasia of alluring charm, amid shadows of danger, darker forces, and truths.

Wilhelm (Bill) and Jacob Grimm published their first fairy tales in 1817, hoping to find “some essential truths about the common people.” They even had a scholarly readership in mind, though eventually becoming popular worldwide. (Remember “Snow White,” “Little Red Riding Hood,” “Hansel and Gretel,” etc.”? Of course.)

Similarly, Bill’s trio comprises some of the most popular masters of jazz spell-casting. Especially in person at Vivarium Tuesday, the threesome seemed like tellers of tales mysterious and timeless, with quicksilver and wayward imaginations. Not to search out hidden “parables” in this largely instrumental music. But their sonic scenarios signify much of their artful power. Another recent review called the trio “bewitching.” They offer a few standard songs along the way, to provide signposts of familiarity.

Guitarist Bill Frisell (right) and bassist Thomas Morgan.

But much of the concert was purely improvised. The potent qualities gestate in the moderate-to-slow grooves they mainly work in, as if communing in magic tongues. Often Frisell would pick out a few curious notes that summon a “once upon a time” feel, as bassist Thomas Morgan and drummer Rudy Royston add dialogue murmur, following Frisell’s myriad harmonic overtones and quirky phrase-turns, at times slightly venomous, elsewhere whispering sweetly. It’s like a person who really thinks before he speaks, thus fragmenting his sentences into disarmingly uncertain-sounding grace notes. Yet at times the small silences work like perfectly-timed pauses for dramatic or comic effect.

The Bill Frisell Trio; (L-R) bassist Thomas Morgan, guitarist Frisell and drummer Rudy Royston; plays closely but freely, with and for each other. 

This was a high level of artistic playing, just as it contained a childlike level of playing, of odd whimsy, either of which can be subverted at any given moment, creating small wonders and striking suspense. At times Morgan’s bass hung so close in the linear weave to be the guitarist’s breathing counterpoint of charm and tension. These musicians seem to play with and for each other, in the best sense. Royston’s drum set sat sideways, to directly face the bassist, and so master tale-spinner Frisell watched each other closely as the music spun a web of simpatico possibility. 1

The audience, in effect, overhears all this sometimes strange and wondrous creativity. One segment involved a slightly ominous descending line that Frisell hooked into a pedal loop, the instant echoing, which sometimes creates a modal raga effect, for him to musically meditate. And yet here it disappeared after two minutes, just as we began to feel it’s subtle powers. Frisell’s then modulates into a fully-formed melody sounding as familiar as one’s favorite recurring fantasy-dream, then collapses into moody cinematics that few guitarists can reach. 2

All this context occurred after a half hour had passed, and Morgan and Royston had taken the only substantial solos. Frisell possesses a kind of leadership modesty like someone far more involved in being a sonic lab scientist with fellow researchers, than making big theoretic pronouncements. Yet later he charged a sequence of rippling Hendrixian flashes and pungent power chords, in a tough but probing passage also recalling Jeff Beck, and all placed precisely in the unfolding way to truth.

Bassist Thomas Morgan

After a lovely, Charlie Haden-esque bass solo from Morgan, and some dissonant Frisell garlands, the guitarist fired up another loop pattern opening into a floating harmonic flow reminiscent of the Grateful Dead, with a crystalline asymmetric phrase ringing like vintage Jerry Garcia. Frisell’s various foot pedals, including “loopers” for the recorded-repeat effect, form a sort of extension of the creative beast in him. One is called a Jam Pedals Tube Dreamer. Perfect. At times, his innate wandering lyricism finds firmer footing and the band kicks up funk and pulsing R&B sorties.

And then the trio unfurled “Who Can I Turn To?” the haltingly beautiful Anthony Newley melody, with a lyric theme wholly befitting this lost-romantic soundscape traveler. Yet the trio really swung mid-song, lifting the mood. These days, Frisell’s hardly a lonesome cowpoke, and he smiles constantly at his fellows. “You Only Live Twice” offered a different philosophic idea, in a captivating old James Bond theme.

After an encore call brimming vintage Cream City Gemütlichkeit, they came back and played “Shenandoah,” which Frisell has played and recorded so often (and superbly) that you could imagine him tattooed with the title, on his forehead, like a Native American headband. Surely, it’s his favorite theme song.

Like the titular river, the song meandered alluringly, then ended with a couple of Frisell-ish pauses, with grungy fuzz-tone chords, and then a pedal chord — reaching for the Vivarium basement, or the dark mud at the bottom of The Shenandoah.

Frisell marveled, “What a great place! This is the first time I’ve ever been to Milwaukee!”

Count on this beautiful monster returning, as surely as Grimm’s tales echo through the dreams of generations. 3

Bill Frisell speaks to the audience at Vivarium

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1 This trio also works in another Frisell project called “When you Wish Upon a Star.” which involves the addition of vocalist and violist Petra Haden, daughter of the great late jazz bassist-bandleader and conceptualist Charlie Haden. Frisell has commented on the project: “I’ve been watching TV and movies my entire life. What I’ve seen and heard there is a huge part of, and is embedded so deeply into the fabric of what fires up my musical imagination. The music we play with this group draws from that deep well and hopefully pays tribute to the countless, anonymous, uncredited, unsung, extraordinary musicians who brought that wonderful world to life.”

2 Another Frisell project is The Mesmerists, a collaboration of the guitarist-composer and his other long-standing trio of bassist Tony Scherr and drummer Kenny Wollesen, with innovative film maker Bill Morrison. This project combines the music of Frisell with the films of Morrison “to create musical alchemy…Morrison often combine rare, degraded archival material with contemporary music.  The Great Flood, a collaboration with Bill Frisell was honored with a Smithsonian Ingenuity Award for historical scholarship.”

3. Frisell’s sometimes childlike sense of wonder manifested right after he stepped onstage to face the audience. He looked around and said, “Are we gonna keep all these lights on like this?” He then peered up and noticed the eight large skylights extending much of the length of the Vivarium concert space. It’s 7:40 p.m. in Milwaukee, so there’s plenty of friendly sunlight and blue skies still smiling from the heavens.

“Ooops!” he said, chuckling to himself, and his perfectly timed gaffe drew warm laughter from the growing crowd (which reached 276, with some standing-room patrons, a good draw for an act largely identified as “jazz.”)

 

 

 

Guitarist Andrew Trim reaches for the moon on “Retroreflector”

Album cover courtesy bandcamp.com

Review: Andrew Trim Retroreflector (Float Free)

Andrew Trim will perform at an album release event, at 7 p.m. July 27, Anodyne Coffee Roasters, 224 West Bruce Street, Milwaukee, WI 53204. 

With his somewhat curious album title, Retroreflector, one wonders what guitarist Andrew Trim is reflecting on retrospectively. The slyly infectious groove his quartet lays down on the title tune leads you Pied Piper-like behind textural footsteps sketched out with deftly articulated power chords.

To me, this backwards-glancing album title lands upon Hendrix, as in “slight return,” a la “Voodoo Child (Slight Return),” the coda to his masterpiece Electric Ladyland. Yet Trim is not leaning too heavily on the Hendrix mystique; rather he’s beginning to carve out his own space inhabited by both pugnacious power chording and poetry.

Speaking of poetry, the second tune, “Swirl,” evoked for me one of my favorite poems, Herman Melville’s “Shiloh,” a politically-pointed reflection on a graveyard of perpetually sleeping Civil War soldiers. Trim endows his more ambiguous subject matter with a certain grace, even if that poem was never specifically associated. A tentative melancholy is buoyed by lyrical wonder. “Shiloh” the poem almost sneaks up on its tragedy with the tender attentiveness: skimming lightly, wheeling still/ the swallows fly low/space over the field and clouded days, the force field of Shiloh –/ over the field were April rain/ Solaced the parched ones stretched in pain…” Melville deftly evokes the men on death’s doorstep. Trim’s theme seems to melt in the air as it picks out atmospheric spots, as if circling bird paths. Then guest guitarist Dave Miller injects a rough counterpoint, evoking the dire conflict contained in each stolen life six feet under – “… Through the pause of night/ that followed the Sunday fight/ around the church of Shiloh –/ the church so lone, the log-built one, / that echoed to many a parting groan…” The poem quickly inserts a painfully poignant statement about the politics of the war between brethren.

I hope other listeners find enough in Trim’s artistry to pursue this, if not other poetic or artistic analogues. This veteran Milwaukee guitarist as developed into one of the most original instrumental voices in Milwaukee, one deeply infused with a latter-day, anti-sainthood of psychedelia.

Guitarist-composer Andrew Trim. Courtesy bandcamp.com

And throughout, I detect a wide range of possible other influences, perhaps most striking Bill Frisell’s haunted pastoral jazz style, on “Lullabye.” The limpid, arcane melody sounds like a question sung out loud, in pure sound. On “Eclipse Plans” I sense some of Jeff Beck’s exquisitely executed guitar distortion. Elsewhere, consider Pat Metheny’s bright-beaming electronica or, by contrast, the driven Black-rock of the guitar-led trio Harriet Tubman. Such associations reflect the impressive range of Trim’s sonic vocabulary.

Also, in ensemble, Retroreflector is sustained superbly by Trim’s bandmates: Dan Pierson on keyboards and synthesizers, Barry Paul Clark on bass, and Nick Lang on drums.

Ultimately Trim’s exploratory work, for its tough harmonic brio, also reaches for his own brand of beauty, that which dwells in the deep cavern between raw, unmined sound and sunlit silhouettes.

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This review was originally published in slightly shorter form, in The Shepherd Express, here: https://shepherdexpress.com/music/album-reviews/retroreflector-by-andrew-trim/

Andrew Trim recently posted a meme on Facebook (below) which aptly characterizes his venture on Retroreflector: “Reach for the moon: A door opens into a smaller room.”

I suspect something extraordinary, perhaps even sacred, may dwell in that enclosure. Such are the revelations of committed creativity.Image