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Bill Frisell
Born in Baltimore, Frisell grew up in Denver,
CO. He began playing the clarinet in the fourth grade. Frisell
took up guitar a few years later for his personal amusement. He
continued with the clarinet, playing in school concert and marching
bands. Frisell briefly considered playing classical clarinet professionally.
He played guitar in rock and R&B bands as a teenager (high
school classmates included Philip Bailey, Andrew Woolfork, and
Larry Dunn, future members of the funk group Earth, Wind, and
Fire). He discovered jazz in the music of Wes Montgomery, and
began to study the music. Dale Bruning, a Denver-based guitarist
and educator, fed his fascination with jazz. Frisell decided to
make guitar his primary instrument. After briefly attending the
University of Northern Colorado, he moved to Boston in 1971 to
attend the Berklee School of Music. There he studied with Michael
Gibbs and John Damian. While at Berklee, Frisell connected with
other like-minded players (Pat Metheny was a classmate). He also
studied with Jim Hall, who became an important influence, especially
in terms of harmony. In the mid-'70s, Frisell began moving away
from pure bebop and began fusing jazz with his other musical interests.
At about this time he began developing his atmospheric, quasi-mictrotonal
style. He discovered that, by using a guitar with a flexible neck,
he could manipulate the instrument's intonation.
A combination of experimental techniques and signal processors
like delay and reverb gave Frisell a sound unlike any other guitarist.
In the late '70s he traveled to Belgium. There he met Manfred
Eicher, the founder of ECM Records. Beginning in the early '80s,
Frisell recorded prolifically for the label, as leader and sideman
with such musicians as Paul Motian and Jan Garbarek. He continued
with the label throughout the decade, earning a reputation as
ECM's "house guitarist." Frisell became much acclaimed
by critics for his sophisticated yet accessible work. Frisell
moved to New York in the '80s, where he worked with many of the
most creative musicians active on the city's "downtown"
jazz scene. In the '80s and '90s he would record and perform with
a huge variety of artists, not all of them jazz musicians. Collaborators
would include rock and pop musicians (drummer Ginger Baker, singers
Marianne Faithfull and Elvis Costello), experimental jazz musicians
(saxophonist/composers John Zorn and Tim Berne), and at least
one classical composer (Gavin Bryars). Frisell composed soundtracks
for the silent films of Buster Keaton. His 1996 album Quartet
won the Deutsche Schallplattenpreis, the German equivalent of
the Grammy.
Frisell became an annual winner of various magazine polls for
his solo work and recordings. By the end of the '90s, Frisell
was one of the most well-known jazz musicians in the world, with
an audience and an aesthetic that transcended the boundaries of
any given style. It should be mentioned that, while Frisell is
best known for his somewhat "ambient" guitar technique,
he is a swinging, harmonically fluent jazz player when the occasion
warrants. Frisell moved to Seattle, WA, in 1989, where he lives
as of this writing.
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