from The Seattle Times:

Mercurial guitarist Bill Frisell has been popping up all over the place lately, but not often with Beautiful Dreamers, which plays the Bellevue Jazz Festival Saturday, May 31. If you’ve never heard this minimalist chamber trio — with Seattle’s Eyvind Kang, viola, and Rudy Royston, drums — do so. These three guys get more big, unusual — and playful — sounds out of three instruments than anyone since guitarist Jim Hall teamed up with clarinetist Jimmy Giuffre trombonist Bob Brookmeyer in the late ’50s.

The comparison is not accidental. As in the earlier outfit, the trio members alternate rhythm, harmony and melody duties, interacting in surprising ways — and in an array of genres. One minute Frisell and Kang share a lickety-split unison on the vintage swing riff “Bugle Boy,” the next, Kang dives under Frisell’s melody on Stephen Foster’s “Beautiful Dreamer” (the trio’s namesake) with dark scales that sound “wrong” till you realize he’s prefiguring the next chord, which Frisell handily resolves. On the classic pop ballad by Little Anthony and the Imperials, “Goin’ Out of My Head” the trio weaves an orchestral tapestry that makes it seem impossible this is only a trio.

Continue reading at The Seattle Times.

Category:
Seattle Jazz