November 11, 2022
Two years after issuing his acclaimed trio album Valentine, GRAMMY Award-winning guitarist and composer Bill Frisell returns with Four, a stunning meditation on loss, renewal, and those mysterious inventions of friendship. Frisell’s third album for Blue Note Records since signing with the label in 2019 proffers new interpretations of previously recorded originals as well as nine new tunes. The session brings together artists of independent spirits and like minds: Blue Note stablemates Gerald Clayton on piano and Johnathan Blake on drums, and longtime collaborator Greg Tardy on saxophone, clarinet, and bass clarinet. “This combination of people had been floating around in the back of my mind since before the pandemic,” says the Brooklyn-based artist.
For generations, critics and peers have recognized Frisell as one of the music’s most treasured participants. Over the years, he’s garnered praise and attention for his playing as well as the anatomy of his compositions — how he structures a form around often a simple melody or progression, creating a gesture at once complex and elemental. Four presents this side of his artistry at its most intuitive.
During the lockdown, like so many prolific artists, Frisell turned inward. “It was traumatic not to be with people,” he says, “so I picked up my guitar, and my guitar saved me.” For those months, he wrote stacks of melodies and compositional ideas. By the time he scheduled Four’s recording sessions, he’d amassed piles of notebooks filled with fragmented music. Laying little more than a sketch of information before his fellow artists, Frisell encouraged a kind of spontaneous, cooperative orchestration. “Nothing was really figured out,” he says. “Everyone had the information, but it was super open as far as who plays what when. Without a bass, it was a little scary, but I wasn’t thinking so much about the instruments. It’s always more about the chemical reaction that’s going to happen.”
While Frisell and Tardy have enjoyed a long association of mutual respect and friendship, the former wondered how their musical familiarity might reactivate alongside two newer energies. Frisell met Clayton when Charles Lloyd asked the guitarist to sit in at a festival some years ago. “That was the first time I’d really played with Gerald,” he says. “I could feel that trust and respect just instantly.” When Clayton joined Frisell’s trio as a guest during a run at the Vanguard, their connection intensified. “He would transform things that I’ve played a thousand times, find pathways through it that I never heard anyone do before.” Similarly, Frisell felt an immediate kinship when he sat in on a date with Blake. “I was like, ‘Who is this guy?’”
Across the recording, each artist’s expression emerges as equal parts melodic and textural. Strong, subtle choices establish the music’s depth of character from the first phrase. Their collective counterpoint shapeshifts, but they remain true to each song’s initial idea. Rarely does anyone grab the mic. “Everyone is just jumping into it all together, and then you find this way of talking with each other,” says Frisell. “You listen to Miles Davis’ quintet and maybe Miles is taking a solo, but it’s the cooperative thing that blows your mind.”
Because much of the repertoire developed at a time of profound loss, the record’s tinged with wistful melancholy. Written for Frisell’s childhood friend Alan Woodward who died quite recently, “Dear Old Friend” presents a tender, almost angelic theme, played with a certain motioned non-tempo. “Alan I’d known since the seventh grade,” says Bill. “He was there when I got my first electric guitar. When I was just starting to mess around with music, he always encouraged me. And he’d keep showing up in different places.”
The title applies not only to Woodward, but to the person to whom Frisell dedicates the entire album, his musical soulmate, the late Ron Miles. “He’s my closest, longest brother-friend,” says Frisell. “You could say he’s not here, but he’s totally here because so much of what I’m playing comes from my times spent with him. And then that gets passed on to someone else. That’s actual tangible proof that these people are still here.”
Clayton and Blake ruminate together on “Claude Utley,” named for Frisell’s friend who died this past year. Blake’s color palette and Tardy’s lyricism pay homage to Utley’s personal expression. “Amazing painter,” says Frisell. “Our house is filled with his stuff. So, he’s still around too.” Sections — and entire compositions — played out of time create soulful, almost ephemeral vessels for communication among the four artists. Other moments of collective introspection include “Invisible,” Tardy delivering tender long tones as the artists leave space for one another; “Dog on a Roof,” a textural lamentation; and Clayton’s airy and transformative solo feature “Always.”
Four also transmits joy, exuberance, and hope. A quirky, syncopated gesture, and feature for Blake, “Holiday” presents a compelling example of the albums through line. “It’s just a few notes in the melody,” says Frisell. “There are these little signposts that we can hit together, but it’s pretty minimal information. It’s a structure — a jungle gym that we’re all climbing around.” Even in the midst of heaviness, the artists create buoyancy. Clayton introduces a clustered rub against consonant movement during his intro on “Waltz for Hal Willner,” another dear friend Bill lost early in the pandemic. The melody first came from an older tune he never recorded and hadn’t really developed until his studio hit for Four, among his fellow artists: “That one melody, I kept hearing it after Hal passed away, and it seemed to fit.”
Aspects of Four reflect Frisell’s affection for Americana, and skilled saturation of blues. But what’s poised to give the record its staying is less tangible. “The album is capturing this first moment in time when we were, all four, together, playing these songs,” he says. “Music is incredible that way because we’ll never play these songs this way again. Once we start playing them live, they’ll change.”
