Bill Frisell Trio featuring Tony Scherr & Kenny Wollesen with Special Guest Sam Amidon
Thursday, February 28th
Doors: 7:00 pm / Show: 8:00 pm
$55 PREMIUM / $40 ADV / $44 DOOR (plus fees)
Bill Frisell’s prolific career as guitarist, composer, and arranger demonstrates extraordinary range and depth, with work rooted in jazz but incorporating elements of blues and other popular American music traditions. Immediately recognizable for his unique sound, he has transformed the modern guitar landscape, steadily expanding his sonic purview and claiming an ever-greater range of musical traditions, media, and repertoire. From Charles Ives and Aaron Copland to Buster Keaton and Bob Dylan, from Sonny Rollins and American Songbook ballads to country blues and Nashville twang, Frisell distills the essence of the American experience. He has collaborated with a wide range of musicians, filmmakers, painters, and has appeared on over 250 recordings, including 40 albums of his own. He is a Grammy winner, USA Fellow and Doris Duke Artist, and received a Letter of Distinction from the American Music Center. Most recently, he was a Guest Curator for the Roots of Americana series at Jazz at Lincoln Center and Resident Artistic Director at the San Francisco Jazz Center.
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Since coming to New York in the 80s, Tony Scherr has become one of the city’s most prolific and in-demand sidemen, playing integral roles in the music of such notable artists as Bill Frisell, John Lurie (Lounge Lizards), Steve Bernstein (Sex Mob), and Norah Jones, as well as some of New York’s better-kept secrets, such as Jesse Harris and the Ferdinandos, The Wollesens, Ursa Minor, and Slowpoke.
Tony has recorded most of these latter artists at his Brooklyn home studio, helping to foster and document a tight-knit, intimate scene of players who are as skilled and daring as they are broadminded and modest.
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Kenny Wollesen is an American drummer and percussionist.
Wollesen has recorded and toured with Tom Waits, Sean Lennon, Ron Sexsmith, Bill Frisell, Norah Jones, John Lurie, Myra Melford, Steven Bernstein, and John Zorn. He is a founding member of the New Klezmer Trio and a member of the Sex Mob and Himalayas groups.
He grew up in Capitola, California, studying at Aptos High School, and spending many teenage years playing with Donny McCaslin. He spent quality classroom time with flugelhornist and arranger Ray Brown at Cabrillo College. He also arranges and studied vibraphone at Cabrillo.
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The Following Mountain, Sam Amidon’s sixth album overall and his third for Nonesuch Records, is his first album of original songs. A deeply personal synthesis of folk-based song form and experimental improvisation, it “feels like a liberation” (Uncut) and “provides constant, jolting surprises” (The Guardian). But in his decade-long career as a recording and touring musician, the singer and multi-instrumentalist (banjo, guitar, fiddle) has always managed to create work that’s utterly original, even when, as on previous discs, he was digging through the sounds and stories of traditional American music. The Following Mountain features appearances by musicians such as Shahzad Ismaily, master percussionists Milford Graves and Juma Sultan, and psychedelic jazz musician Sam Gendel.