Family Matinee featuring Bill Frisell's Beautiful Dreamers
2013-09-14
Miner Auditorium
SFJAZZ Center, 205 Franklin St, San Francisco, CA
2:00 PM, Saturday, September 14, 2013

[2:02 PM lights down, Introduction by Rebeca Mauleón]

1. [2:06 PM] ? »
2. [2:12 PM] ? »
3. [2:21 PM] ? MDHF
4. [2:26 PM] ? »
5. [2:29 PM] ? »
6. [2:36 PM] ? »
7. [2:43 PM] ?
   [set ends 2:50 PM]
   
   Q&A
8. [2:51 PM]
   [show ends 3:00 PM]

• Bill Frisell: guitar;
• Eyvind Kang: viola;
• Rudy Royston: drums.
• Jim Woodring: cartoon artist.

What a fun show! Although it was quite short (as I expected for a matinee), I liked today's show best of the three Frisell gigs this week. I think the addition of Rudy on drums was the key – having someone else play timekeeper seemed to allow Bill to lighten up and experiment more.

It was also interesting to me that Eyvind and Bill were both playing off sheet music, while Rudy had none. Guess the drummer just has to feel his way by intuition! Both Rudy and Bill had monitors on the floor so that they could watch Jim's drawing develop, but it was hard to tell whether they took that opportunity or not. Bill commented during the Q&A that he was nervous about playing new music and mostly concentrated on his music instead of the art.

Watching Jim draw was interesting too – in fact, his effort was the focal point of my attention. In a typical show, I spend a lot of time listening with closed eyes, but instead of shifting my gaze inward today, I tended to look upward to see what had changed since my last glance, and to watch Jim add new elements. Technicallly, the art was rather spare: drawing with Photoshop, Jim used a single round-tipped brush of medium desaturated blue (rather like a felt-tip pen) to draw on a pale yellow background. At no time did I observe him undo or erase elements, though he did draw new curves to embellish or extend components of the work, transforming them in the process into new entities quite distinct from the first forms. For this work, he seemed to favor the use of scales, spots and teeth as decorative pieces. What might have looked initially like a dream-monster hand would be given spots for eyes and then teeth to reveal a head. Scary! But in a fun way.

I hope someone posts pictures from the evening show so I can see what else he draws!

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