The Big Sur Region Of Coastal California Brings Inspiration To Frisell's Music!
With the release of Big Sur - his debut on Sony Classical's revived Okeh label, and first album with his Big Sur Quintet - guitarist-composer Bill Frisell makes a major contribution to the catalog of works inspired by a unique stretch of Western landscape.
Legendary jazz guitarist Bill Frisell's first release on OKeh Records, Big Sur, features all-new music commissioned by the Monterey Jazz Festival which premiered at their festival in 2012. While staying at the Glen Deven Ranch, Frisell was captivated by the beauty and grandeur of the Big Sur, California coastline which inspired him to write this transcendent music. He is joined on the recording by the talented musicians of his Big Sur Quintet: Jenny Scheinman (violin), Eyvind Kang (viola), Hank Roberts (cello), and Rudy Royston (drums).
Bill Frisell is one of the leading and most innovative guitarists of our time. Although his work is steeped in jazz, his music includes characteristics of rock, country, and bluegrass, among various other styles. Such liberality explains his willingness to expand his tonal palette beyond that of the typical jazz guitarist and he has carved out a niche by virtue of his sound. A Grammy winner for Best Contemporary Jazz Album in 2005, Bill is one of the most singular musicians of his generation and has released over 30 albums since his debut recording in 1983.
The quintet recorded Big Sur at Fantasy Studios in Berkeley, California, with longtime Frisell collaborators Lee Townsend and Adam Muñoz producing and engineering, respectively.
In a career spanning more than 25 years and over 200 recordings, including 25 albums of his own, guitarist, composer, and bandleader Bill Frisell is now firmly established as a visionary presence in American music. He has collaborated with a wide range of artists, filmmakers and legendary musicians. But it is his work as a leader that has garnered increasing attention and accolades. The New York Times said that It's hard to find a more fruitful meditation on American music than in the compositions of guitarist Bill Frisell. Mixing rock and country with jazz and blues, he's found what connects them: improvisation and a sense of play. Unlike other pastichists, who tend to duck passion, Mr. Frisell plays up the pleasure in the music and also takes on another often-avoided subject, tenderness."
"Big SurFrisell's debut for Sony's restarted Okeh imprint and the guitarist's return to a major label after spending a couple years on the independent Savoy Jazzbrings together two of his groups, the trio responsible for Beautiful Dreamers (Savoy Jazz, 2010) and his longstanding 858 Quartet, last heard on Sign of Life (Savoy Jazz, 2011). With violist Eyvind Kang (and, of course, Frisell) the connecting thread between the two groups, what Big Sur is, then, is a string quartet (with Frisell replacing one of the violins) with a stronger pulse.
"858 has, of course, always been able to shape its own rhythms, as it most assuredly did at its 2010 Ottawa Jazz Festival performance, but with the addition of Royston, it allows the music of Big Sur to unfold with an even stronger sense of groove...rocking out, even, as it does on "A Good Spot" and "The Big One," a riff-driven blues with a go-go beat that evokes images of the 1960s and the importance of the California area of Big Sur that, with its long stretches of surf-ready coastline, became an important focal point of inspiration for not just rock (The Beach Boys and, more recently, Death Can for Cuties), jazz (Charles Lloyd) and classical (John Adams) music, but an important epicenter for photographers like Ansel Adams and writers like Jack Kerouac and Hunter S. Thompson.
"Frisell's 65-minute suite was commissioned by the Monterey Jazz Festivalthe absolutely appropriate source, situated, as it is, just north of Big Sur's largely unpopulated 90-mile stretch of coastline. Largely composed during a 10-day stay at Big Sur's Glen Deven Ranch and later rehearsed there by the entire quintetFrisell paying tribute on the opening "The Music of Glen Deven Ranch," which feels almost like an overture to a suite cinematic in scope and evocative of this unique place in the worldit was a rare opportunity for Frisell, who seems to almost always be on the road or busy with a recording, to have some real down time to write.
"The result is a work that somehow manages to evoke not just the part of the country which is its inspiration, but American music as a whole. There are, with Frisell now in his fourth decade as a recording artist, plenty of others informed by the humble guitarist's gentle yet, at times oblique lyricism, his ability to play even the simplest triad-based chord without losing his voice, and his unmistakable idiosyncrasies that render repeated readings of popular cover songs like Hank Williams, Sr.'s "I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry" utterly personal. But as much as certain Frisellian signatures have been seconded by others, he remains a guitarist often imitated but never duplicated.
"With Royston driving the group with a stronger pulseeven on the more balladic tracks like "Song for Lana Works," featuring cellist Hank Roberts, or "Going to California," with Frisell's layers of overdriven, tremolo'd and ever-sweet clean tone at the foreBig Sur provides Frisell's 858 Quartet to be stronger and more immediate. And if Frisell's guitar remains unifying throughout, so, too, is the entire group's approacha constantly evolving one that, over the past several years and numerous permutations and combinations, largely supplants individualism with the mitochondria-leveled symbiotic synergism that defines Big Sur and demonstrates just how, with the seemingly mere addition of one musician in Royston, the collective multilateralism is significantly altered.
"That's not to say everyone doesn't get the chance to shine; only that it's less about creating a context for soloing and more about an instrumental mix that's constantly and organically shifting, so that Kang and violinist Jenny Scheinman interweave over Frisell and Roberts' pedal tone on the harmonically static, near-Celtic traditionalism of "The Animals," while cellist Hank Roberts rises to the top on the ethereal "Big Sur," doubling Frisell's serpentine melody while Scheinman and Kang's ascending and descending harmonies provide a gentle, constantly shifting foundation...
"Is it jazz? Hard to say. Does it matter? Not one whit. There's no doubt that the improvisational spirit of jazz imbues and informs Big Sur and its reliance on interpreting Frisell's all-original set of 19 miniatures (only one cracking the five minute mark, more than half coming in under four). Instead, Big Sur represents Frisell's ongoing consolidation and confluence of a growing number of touchstones and, after his focus on the music of John Lennon on All We Are Saying (Savoy Jazz, 2011) and subsequent touring in 2012 (including a transcendent Ottawa performance), is a superb and most welcome return to not just Frisell the wondrous guitarist, but Frisell the inimitable composer. " - John Kelman, allaboutjazz.com, June 11, 2013
Features:
180g Vinyl
Double LP
Mastered by Greg Calbi
Produced by Lee Townsend
Gatefold Jacket
Musicians:
Bill Frisell, guitar
Eyvind Kang, viola
Hank Roberts, cello
Rudy Royston, drums
Jenny Scheinman, violin
Selections:
LP1 - Side One:
1. The Music of Glen Deven Ranch
2. Sing Together Like A Family
3. A Good Spot
4. Going To California
5. The Big One
6. Somewhere
LP1 - Side Two:
1. Gather Good Things
2. Cry Alone
3. The Animals
4. Highway 1
LP2 - Side Three:
1. A Beautiful View
2. Hawks
3. We All Love Neil Young
4. Big Sur
LP2 - Side Four:
1. On the Lookout
2. Shacked Up
3. Walking Stick (for Jim Cox)
4. Song For Lana Weeks
5. Far Away
With the release of Big Sur - his debut on Sony Classical's revived Okeh label, and first album with his Big Sur Quintet - guitarist-composer Bill Frisell makes a major contribution to the catalog of works inspired by a unique stretch of Western landscape.
Legendary jazz guitarist Bill Frisell's first release on OKeh Records, Big Sur, features all-new music commissioned by the Monterey Jazz Festival which premiered at their festival in 2012. While staying at the Glen Deven Ranch, Frisell was captivated by the beauty and grandeur of the Big Sur, California coastline which inspired him to write this transcendent music. He is joined on the recording by the talented musicians of his Big Sur Quintet: Jenny Scheinman (violin), Eyvind Kang (viola), Hank Roberts (cello), and Rudy Royston (drums).
Bill Frisell is one of the leading and most innovative guitarists of our time. Although his work is steeped in jazz, his music includes characteristics of rock, country, and bluegrass, among various other styles. Such liberality explains his willingness to expand his tonal palette beyond that of the typical jazz guitarist and he has carved out a niche by virtue of his sound. A Grammy winner for Best Contemporary Jazz Album in 2005, Bill is one of the most singular musicians of his generation and has released over 30 albums since his debut recording in 1983.
The quintet recorded Big Sur at Fantasy Studios in Berkeley, California, with longtime Frisell collaborators Lee Townsend and Adam Muñoz producing and engineering, respectively.
In a career spanning more than 25 years and over 200 recordings, including 25 albums of his own, guitarist, composer, and bandleader Bill Frisell is now firmly established as a visionary presence in American music. He has collaborated with a wide range of artists, filmmakers and legendary musicians. But it is his work as a leader that has garnered increasing attention and accolades. The New York Times said that It's hard to find a more fruitful meditation on American music than in the compositions of guitarist Bill Frisell. Mixing rock and country with jazz and blues, he's found what connects them: improvisation and a sense of play. Unlike other pastichists, who tend to duck passion, Mr. Frisell plays up the pleasure in the music and also takes on another often-avoided subject, tenderness."
"Big SurFrisell's debut for Sony's restarted Okeh imprint and the guitarist's return to a major label after spending a couple years on the independent Savoy Jazzbrings together two of his groups, the trio responsible for Beautiful Dreamers (Savoy Jazz, 2010) and his longstanding 858 Quartet, last heard on Sign of Life (Savoy Jazz, 2011). With violist Eyvind Kang (and, of course, Frisell) the connecting thread between the two groups, what Big Sur is, then, is a string quartet (with Frisell replacing one of the violins) with a stronger pulse.
"858 has, of course, always been able to shape its own rhythms, as it most assuredly did at its 2010 Ottawa Jazz Festival performance, but with the addition of Royston, it allows the music of Big Sur to unfold with an even stronger sense of groove...rocking out, even, as it does on "A Good Spot" and "The Big One," a riff-driven blues with a go-go beat that evokes images of the 1960s and the importance of the California area of Big Sur that, with its long stretches of surf-ready coastline, became an important focal point of inspiration for not just rock (The Beach Boys and, more recently, Death Can for Cuties), jazz (Charles Lloyd) and classical (John Adams) music, but an important epicenter for photographers like Ansel Adams and writers like Jack Kerouac and Hunter S. Thompson.
"Frisell's 65-minute suite was commissioned by the Monterey Jazz Festivalthe absolutely appropriate source, situated, as it is, just north of Big Sur's largely unpopulated 90-mile stretch of coastline. Largely composed during a 10-day stay at Big Sur's Glen Deven Ranch and later rehearsed there by the entire quintetFrisell paying tribute on the opening "The Music of Glen Deven Ranch," which feels almost like an overture to a suite cinematic in scope and evocative of this unique place in the worldit was a rare opportunity for Frisell, who seems to almost always be on the road or busy with a recording, to have some real down time to write.
"The result is a work that somehow manages to evoke not just the part of the country which is its inspiration, but American music as a whole. There are, with Frisell now in his fourth decade as a recording artist, plenty of others informed by the humble guitarist's gentle yet, at times oblique lyricism, his ability to play even the simplest triad-based chord without losing his voice, and his unmistakable idiosyncrasies that render repeated readings of popular cover songs like Hank Williams, Sr.'s "I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry" utterly personal. But as much as certain Frisellian signatures have been seconded by others, he remains a guitarist often imitated but never duplicated.
"With Royston driving the group with a stronger pulseeven on the more balladic tracks like "Song for Lana Works," featuring cellist Hank Roberts, or "Going to California," with Frisell's layers of overdriven, tremolo'd and ever-sweet clean tone at the foreBig Sur provides Frisell's 858 Quartet to be stronger and more immediate. And if Frisell's guitar remains unifying throughout, so, too, is the entire group's approacha constantly evolving one that, over the past several years and numerous permutations and combinations, largely supplants individualism with the mitochondria-leveled symbiotic synergism that defines Big Sur and demonstrates just how, with the seemingly mere addition of one musician in Royston, the collective multilateralism is significantly altered.
"That's not to say everyone doesn't get the chance to shine; only that it's less about creating a context for soloing and more about an instrumental mix that's constantly and organically shifting, so that Kang and violinist Jenny Scheinman interweave over Frisell and Roberts' pedal tone on the harmonically static, near-Celtic traditionalism of "The Animals," while cellist Hank Roberts rises to the top on the ethereal "Big Sur," doubling Frisell's serpentine melody while Scheinman and Kang's ascending and descending harmonies provide a gentle, constantly shifting foundation...
"Is it jazz? Hard to say. Does it matter? Not one whit. There's no doubt that the improvisational spirit of jazz imbues and informs Big Sur and its reliance on interpreting Frisell's all-original set of 19 miniatures (only one cracking the five minute mark, more than half coming in under four). Instead, Big Sur represents Frisell's ongoing consolidation and confluence of a growing number of touchstones and, after his focus on the music of John Lennon on All We Are Saying (Savoy Jazz, 2011) and subsequent touring in 2012 (including a transcendent Ottawa performance), is a superb and most welcome return to not just Frisell the wondrous guitarist, but Frisell the inimitable composer. " - John Kelman, allaboutjazz.com, June 11, 2013
Features:
180g Vinyl
Double LP
Mastered by Greg Calbi
Produced by Lee Townsend
Gatefold Jacket
Musicians:
Bill Frisell, guitar
Eyvind Kang, viola
Hank Roberts, cello
Rudy Royston, drums
Jenny Scheinman, violin
Selections:
LP1 - Side One:
1. The Music of Glen Deven Ranch
2. Sing Together Like A Family
3. A Good Spot
4. Going To California
5. The Big One
6. Somewhere
LP1 - Side Two:
1. Gather Good Things
2. Cry Alone
3. The Animals
4. Highway 1
LP2 - Side Three:
1. A Beautiful View
2. Hawks
3. We All Love Neil Young
4. Big Sur
LP2 - Side Four:
1. On the Lookout
2. Shacked Up
3. Walking Stick (for Jim Cox)
4. Song For Lana Weeks
5. Far Away
