HARMONY - Bill Frisell

In a short film released by Blue Note Records in 2019 to support Bill Frisell's label debut Harmony, the guitarist from Denver, Colorado, recalls his career in his incomparably accessible and likeable way as an amazing sequence of incredible encounters with colleagues and role models. Life is one big stroke of luck. Want an example? Charles Lloyd was on the cover of the first Downbeat magazine Frisell bought in the 1960s. He then attended a concert by the quartet with Paul Motian, Ron McClure and Keith Jarrett. Decades later, Frisell was to record with Charles Lloyd for "Blue Note", before which he had played with Paul Motian for many years. When he was to play a concert with Charles Lloyd for the first time, he was greeted by him with the words: "I'm looking forward to singing with you tonight." Which brings us to Project Harmony, for this quartet is explicitly vocal. Music is made and sung together until all the strange genre labels and pigeonholes have dissolved around the campfire: Jazz, folk, country, Americana - fiddlesticks! It's exquisitely about the singable and the communal. And of course, with Petra Haden, somehow Charlie Haden is also involved, who would have loved Harmony as an idea and musically. In the recently published Frisell biography "Beautiful Dreamer", biographer Philip Watson tells us that Frisell asked him what he wanted to write about. All he had achieved were the 35 years of marriage with his wife. No fights, no crises, no drugs, no gossip. Just music: With Charles Lloyd, Paul Motian, John Zorn, Hank Roberts, Jan Garbarek, Eberhard Weber, Wayne Horvitz, Charly Haden, Joe Lovano, Elvis Costello, Joey Baron, Kenny Wheeler, Lee Konitz, Ron Carter, Petra Haden, Brian Blade, Vinicius Cantuária and and and ...