JAZZ OF FOUR CONTINENTS

BILL FRISELL & KENNY WOLLESEN (USA)

Wednesday 29/03/2017 from 21:00

Geniuses collide as iconic guitarist Bill Frisell and Kenny Wollesen on drums play brand new and exciting original compositions.

Bill Frisell’s career as a guitarist and composer has spanned more than 35 years and many celebrated recordings, whose catalog has been cited by Downbeat as “the best recorded output of the decade,” including his recent albums for Savoy - Sign of Life with the 858 Quartet, Beautiful Dreamers , All We Are Saying, a collection of John Lennon interpretations and his debut release for OKeh/Sony Masterworks, Big Sur , featuring music commissioned by the Monterey Jazz Festival and composed at the Glen Deven Ranch in Big Sur, for strings, guitar and drums in a quintet comprised of long-time musical associates.

Frisell’s latest album for Okeh/Sony iw When You Wish Upon a Star , a project that germinated at Lincoln Center during Bill’s two-year appointment as guest curator for the Roots of Americana series (September ’13 – May ’15). It features Frisell with vocalist Petra Haden, Eyvind Kang (viola), Thomas Morgan (bass) and Rudy Royston (drums) performing Frisell’s arrangements and interpretations of Music from Film and Television. Jazz Times described the project as follows: “unforgettable themes are the real draw here, reconfigured with ingenuity, wit and affection by Frisell and a terrific group.” The touring version of the band includes Haden, Morgan and Royston.

Always on the lookout for opportunities to "dig around for where I'm coming from," Frisell’s recent project, GUITAR IN THE SPACE AGE ! , is an homage to the inspirational popular music of his formative years made in the wake of “the birth of the Fender Telecaster guitar” - (1951, the same year as Frisell’s own birth) - that, he recalls, "got me super fired-up" about his instrument of choice. Frisell and his band mates explore material on the Okeh/Sony Masterworks release associated with The Beach Boys, Junior Wells, Pete Seeger, The Byrds, Duane Eddy, The Ventures, The Kinks, Chet Atkins, Link Wray, Speedy West & Jimmy Bryant, The Astronauts, Merle Travis, Johnny Smith and others, as well as original material by Frisell.

Drummer Kenny Wollesen performed on over 30 recordings during the 1990s and, as the decade progressed, gained increasing renown as a musician of astonishing versatility, skill, and ingenuity. He has recorded and toured with all kinds of musicians, from Tom Waits (Wolleson performs on Waits' 1993 collaboration with William S. Burroughs, Black Rider), to Sean Lennon, to Ron Sexsmith (Wollesen performs on his second album, Other Songs).

A founding member of the New Klezmer Trio, Wollesen is also all over N.Y.C.'s downtown jazz and avant-garde musicians' recordings, and has been so active as to tour with Bill Frisell and Myra Melford in the same month. — Joslyn Layne Better than anybody before or since, Kenny Wollesen blended a modern percussionist's drive and eclecticism with an insider's respect for the nineteenth-century klezmer vocabulary. With Kenny on the sticks in 1987 and '88, The Klezmorim had the chops to achieve a funky 1910 street-band groove, and the confidence to fuse klezmer with rock and jazz.

Wollesen stands out as a drummer's drummer -- playing masterfully but loose, peppering the beat with a mulligatawney stew of musical ideas.

Bill Frisell - electric guitar

Kenny Wollesen - drums

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