Bill Frisell, eminent
Place and date: El Molino (9/III/2025) ★★★★✩
The label of jazzman is a very narrow one for Bill Frisell, a guitarist seasoned in a thousand battles and styles. He demonstrated this in spades, accompanied by a rhythm section made up of bassist Thomas Morgan and drummer Rudy Royston, during his visit to El Molino. They did two sessions that turned into two completely different performances as they did not repeat any song, taking advantage of the opportunity to show a multifaceted personality that allows him to make his own a good number of versions, whether taken from the field of jazz, soundtracks or folk and traditional music.
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His dazzling career does not prevent him from behaving with the humility and discretion worthy of the greatest. And as he told this newspaper, his concerts are improvised on the fly, without any pre-established scheme. He says that he understands his trio perfectly and that rather than a leader he feels like a student, learning and improving with each performance. And although he is the one who sets the tone, the music flows spontaneously, oscillating from one song to another with astonishing naturalness. So much so that in the first performance there was no pause.
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It was a long hour straight, with the addition of an encore as a climax, with the swinging Days of wine & roses by Henry Mancini. Before that they had time to open with a tribute to Sonny Rollins in the form of Way out west, which they linked with a more abstract tribute to the painter Claude Utley, to move on to the blues accent of Nobody's fault but mine, recorded a century ago by Blind Willie Johnson. And from there back to jazz with an intimate and insinuated re-reading of Isfahan, by the duo Billy Strayhorn and Duke Ellington, to continue with an immersion in their own work, with the distorted moments of Again and the almost Caribbean aroma of Keep your eyes open. Between delicious riffs, and without ever abusing their virtuosity, they finished off with a sinuous revision of Burt Bacharach's What the world needs now is love , spliced with Baba drame by Malian Boubacar Traore, transformed into a whirlwind of distortion in the style of a guitar hero.
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The second set was even better, if possible, with a Misterioso by Thelonious Monk that did justice to this classic, a Rambler of their own in the 'American' style and a traditional Shenandoah that served to insist on that accent. Then they evolved towards a rock jam, at the expense of Follow your heart by John McLaughlin, culminating with You only live twice by John Barry, to give it a caressing, crepuscular and romantic sensuality, in which neither the original orchestra nor the voice of Nancy Sinatra were missing. Such an eminent guitarist wanted to culminate his commendable task by rescuing We shall overcome, the protest song made famous by Pete Seeger and Joan Baez, converted into an anthem of the civil rights movement in the United States and that now, in times of reactionary involution, is more necessary than ever to remember.
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