{"id":16266,"date":"2024-06-08T10:18:27","date_gmt":"2024-06-08T15:18:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/?p=16266"},"modified":"2025-02-08T15:56:22","modified_gmt":"2025-02-08T21:56:22","slug":"bill-frisell-and-the-artful-power-of-improvisation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/?p=16266","title":{"rendered":"Bill Frisell and the artful power of improvisation"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Guitarist Bill Frisell (right) and bassist Thomas Morgan.<\/em><\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Wilhelm (Bill) and Jacob Grimm published their first fairy tales in 1817, hoping to find \u201csome essential truths about the common people.\u201d They even had a scholarly readership in mind, though eventually becoming popular worldwide. (Remember \u201cSnow White,\u201d \u201cLittle Red Riding Hood,\u201d \u201cHansel and Gretel,\u201d etc.\u201d? Of course.)<\/p>\n

Similarly, Bill\u2019s 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 \u201cparables\u201d 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.<\/p>\n

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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.<\/em><\/p>\n

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 \u201conce upon a time\u201d feel, as bassist Thomas Morgan and drummer Rudy Royston add dialogue murmur, following Frisell\u2019s myriad harmonic overtones and quirky phrase-turns, at times slightly venomous, elsewhere whispering sweetly. <\/strong>It\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

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The Bill Frisell Trio; (L-R) bassist Thomas Morgan, guitarist Frisell and drummer Rudy Royston; plays closely but freely, with and for each other.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

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\u2019s bass hung so close in the linear weave to be the guitarist\u2019s breathing counterpoint of charm and tension. These musicians seem to play with and for each other<\/em>, in the best sense. Royston\u2019s drum set sat sideways, to directly face the bassist, and so master tale-spinner Frisell watched his fellows closely as the music spun a web of simpatico possibility. 1<\/p>\n

The audience, in effect, overhears<\/em> 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\u2019s subtle powers. Frisell\u2019s then modulates into a fully-formed melody sounding as familiar as one\u2019s favorite recurring fantasy-dream, then collapses into moody cinematics that few guitarists can reach. 2<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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Bassist Thomas Morgan<\/em><\/p>\n

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\u2019s various foot pedals, including \u201cloopers\u201d 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.<\/p>\n

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And then the trio unfurled \u201cWho Can I Turn To?\u201d 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\u2019s hardly a lonesome cowpoke, and he smiles constantly at his bandmates. \u201cYou Only Live Twice\u201d offered a different philosophic idea, in a captivating old James Bond theme.<\/p>\n

After an encore call brimming vintage Cream City Gem\u00fctlichkeit,<\/em> they came back and played \u201cShenandoah,\u201d 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\u2019s his favorite theme song.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Frisell marveled, \u201cWhat a great place! This is the first time I\u2019ve ever been to Milwaukee!\u201d<\/p>\n

Count on this beautiful monster returning, as surely as Grimm\u2019s tales echo through the dreams of generations. 3<\/p>\n

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Bill Frisell speaks to the audience at Vivarium<\/em><\/p>\n

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