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On June 26th, 2010 Bill Frisell delivered his second performance at the thirtieth annual Ottawa jazz festival. Though the concert was held in the National Arts Centre’s intimate studio just like it had been on the previous night this was no carbon copy; this show featured a significantly different ensemble playing completely different music and man, was it drop-dead amazing. Sure, the night before had been astoundingly good – Bill Frisell never ceases to amaze me – but this was one of the best Bill Frisell concerts I’ve ever seen, and that’s saying something.
The lineup was Bill on his Telecaster, Jenny Scheinman on violin, Eyvind Kang on viola, and Hank Roberts on the violoncello (aside from Eyvind Kang who had played with Frisell the night before I had never heard of any of them either). They called themselves the 858 Quartet and it was basically a string quartet with an electric guitar subbing in for one of the violins.
And what subbing, I tell you.
Compositionally the music was all over the map. Sometimes ethereal, sometimes classical-like, sometimes darn near country swing; everything was magnetically engaging. The only element that remained consistent throughout was a liberal use of dissonance, beautiful ugly thickness that pierced and permeated every number. Sometimes the dissonance would come and go, sometimes it would lay a steady foundation, sometimes it would jump to the fore and take charge, but one way or the other it was always there lurking and making everything more interesting and unpredictable.
You can’t predict dissonance any more than you can predict chaos. Sure you might know chaos is coming, but you can never know what form it will take. That’s what makes it chaos. Dissonance is the same.
Notably, the three side players were all reading off of music stands (Frisell wasn’t) so it even looked almost like a proper string quartet but I tell you, they all played with such a relaxed, anti-classical feel…I can’t imagine where Bill found them. Solid, classically-trained score-readers that had shedded the almost requisite rigidity of classical ensemble playing? Wow, what a breath of fresh air.
And of course the airy brilliance of Bill Frisell centred and grounded the whole thing. Inserting his uniquely stylized playing into these dense yet sparse compositions created fascinating results. I stayed perched on the edge of my seat with a Zen-like relaxation.
It was quite simply one of the best, most unimaginable performances from one of my favourite musicians. It left my soul breathless.
I went straight home afterwards; there was no sense trying to find more music on this night. I was full.
Todd Man Out 