Somewhere before. “Somewhere Before” (1968) is, for those with a good memory, one of the very first albums by a barely twenty-year-old Keith Jarrett, in a trio with Paul Motian and Charlie Haden. That title – at once an invitation to vagueness and to searching – is one possible way of approaching the latest work by another titan, Bill Frisell, who, just before blowing out seventy-five candles, has released “In My Dreams” (Blue Note). Jarrett’s record offers one possible lens both for anecdotal reasons and because it opens with a reinterpretation of a Bob Dylan song, My Back Pages. The anecdote – told on several occasions, though recently discussed in depth in an interview Ethan Iverson conducted with Frisell – has it that the music director of the school orchestra assigned the guitarist Wes Montgomery’s Bumpin’ on Sunset, which for the young Bill, then under the spell of Jimi Hendrix, […]
Bill Frisell at 75
To celebrate his three quarters of a century, the guitarist has given himself a new band and a splendid new album
