Bill Frisell at the Barns at Wolftrap, 3/3/2010

Went to see Bill Frisell at the Barns at Wolftrap a couple of weeks ago. I didn't really know what to expect. His music has been known to vary pretty drastically from one record to the next, with only his guitar tone maintaining some kind of consistency, and his current trio consists of drums (Rudy Royston) and viola (Eivind Kang)! The show was less weird than one might have expected. Frisell's unmistakable tone was there, and the band sounded surprisingly complete despite the lack of a proper bass voice or other chordal instruments, probably because Frisell himself is so good at filling a lot of space without sounding muddy. The band occasionally slid into free-ish bits of noise and open meter, but by and large stayed in the groove, mostly thanks to Royston who could have easily overplayed but didn't. Kang, for my money, was the least impressive of the bunch. I never really embraced the violin and its ilk as a valid voice in an improvised context, and the fact that Kang was amplified killed the rich overtone series of a good instrument, flattening it into a droning mess. Occasionally, the viola worked well as a sound effect, sounding at times like a whimpering animal or some evil, post-apocalyptic calliope - but as a soloist Kang was not memorable. But on the whole, the show was worth hearing. Frisell is fairly rare in today's world in that he is very idiosyncratic yet almost always accessible, and the live performance was no different. I won't run out to buy a copy of his latest record, but the evening was enjoyable nonetheless.