Choose artist...

Top 10 for Feb

Bill Frisell Trio set for Boulder Theater / Westword

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 whatever music he's playing, whether it's jazz, Americana, country, folk or many other music traditions that he's worked into one of the most distinctive guitar voices in the last few decades. Music IS, Frisell's first solo album in a decade, shows just how wide his scope reaches.

To prepare for Music IS, he took a big pile of sheet music of his own songs to a weeklong solo stint at the experimental music space The Stone in New York City and played different songs each night. Some of these songs were newer compositions that he hadn't played yet, or older songs he had never performed live, like "In Line," from his 1983 ECM debut of the same name.

While the sixteen-track Music IS has some stunning new songs, like "Thankful" and "What Do You Want," Frisell also puts fresh solo takes on older songs like "Rambler," also from In Line, "Ron Carter" and "The Pioneers." Frisell recorded the album with longtime collaborators Lee Townsend and Tucker Martine, and he says making it was sort of like playing a gig in slow motion.

The Bill Frisell Trio is set for the Boulder Theater, tonight June 13.     READ THE FULL Westword ARTICLE