The song opens simply enough, with mildly sonic-looping, electronic pings reminiscent of raindrops on a metallic roof. The music presents as a mystery, a harbinger of something to come but no indication of what.
Then the transition begins, a gentle segue into the recognizable notes of the folk standard “Shenandoah.” This is a song performed thousands of times by dozens of artists, but in the hands and fingers of renowned jazz guitarist Bill Frisell it is imbued with both its traditional melodic foundation and a hypnotic otherworldliness that separates it from the multitude of other renditions.
This, after all, is what Bill Frisell does. He takes known songs — roots standards, solo John Lennon songs, jazz greats, just to cite a few — and morphs them into something unique while keeping the artistic soul of origin intact.
“There’s the incredible freedom I have to use the melody as a jumping-off place to all kinds of other worlds,” Frisell said in a recent phone interview with CITY. “The guitar is my voice and I’m just singing the song. The songs change from moment-to-moment or from day-to-day.”
Frisell returns to the Rochester International Jazz Festival (RIJF) this year for the eleventh time; The Bill Frisell Trio performs June 24.
On the call from his Brooklyn home, Frisell said he’s surprised he keeps getting invited back; but no one else is.
“Bill Frisell is not just a brilliant guitar virtuoso, he is one of the most eloquent and gifted jazz artists of our time,” RIJF co-producer John Nugent wrote in a recent email. “His artistry embodies ingenuity and dexterity. Time and time again, he mystifies and captivates his audiences around the world with an endless stream of magically unique improvisations.”
It’s also no surprise this festival favorite is one of the artists chosen this year for something new: Club Pass performances at the stately Kodak Hall at Eastman Theatre.
“Bill has performed in various venues at RIJF and is the perfect artist for our newest Club Pass series venue, Kodak Hall at Eastman Theatre,” Nugent said.
Frisell could have been a student at the Eastman School of Music, had life taken a different turn. Music was always an emotional centerpiece of his life (he kept a transistor radio under his pillow as a kid), but his first instrument was the clarinet. Frisell was first chair with most performances, and the classical masters were a constant with his repertoire.
He applied to Eastman as a performance major but was instead accepted as an education major. He declined, and then turned to the instrument that he loved, the guitar.
Even now, Frisell wonders what would have happened had he made a different choice.
“If they had accepted me as a performance major, who knows,” he said. Perhaps he would now be a jazz clarinetist.
Like so many, young Frisell was a fan of rock music. But he also found himself enamored with the blues, big band, country and, especially, jazz. It was in the latter he witnessed a freedom, an improvisational arc that took music to an even more special and heightened place for him.
“There was always an element of improvisation, even all the way back to surf music, probably the first guitar music that I tried to play,” he said.
But jazz took improvisation to different realms.
Within those realms, and perhaps beyond, is where Frisell and his music now reside. Those who have seen Bill Frisell Trio performances in Rochester often leave with the same questions: did the performers have any idea what song was coming when Frisell began with his uniquely singular openings? Did Frisell even know?
“I’m often not even sure what song I’m going to play,” he said. “I’ll play a chord or I’ll play a sound and I’m sort of just looking around in whatever is in my imagination, something that will spark a memory of a song. It’s that kind of spontaneity where we don’t really plan a setlist.”
For those looking for clues as to what to expect when the Bill Frisell Trio takes the stage at Kodak Hall, there are no answers. That’s the beauty of Frisell — the uncertainty for the audience as well as the performer.
“Thinking back, maybe more than I realize, music was always, for me, a world that I could enter into even before I tried to play an instrument,” he said.
As a youth, Frisell would flip on that transistor radio under his pillow and the sounds would seep through.
“I would be transported by whatever was coming out of the radio,” he said.
He is still transported, as are audiences when graced with a Bill Frisell performance.
“I’m 75 years old and I just can’t wait for the next time I get to play.”
Gary Craig is a former “Democrat and Chronicle” reporter who retired last year after 45 years in the newspaper business. He continues to freelance and also report and write via Substack.
