The GRAMMY-winning “super-musicians” (LA Times) of EIGHTH BLACKBIRD, an impeccable sextet with the energy and audacity of a rock band, team up with revered singer-songwriter WILL OLDHAM on a program that will include Frederic Rzewski’s powerful spoken word piece “Coming Together,” as well as arrangements of Oldham’s songs, material by Bryce Dessner, and other works. The Chicago based group has emerged as one of the most vital bridges between the contemporary classical and pop worlds, a versatile ensemble whose omnivorous tastes have led them to a host of interesting and surprising collaborative adventures. This is their first performance with Oldham, who has recorded some of the most thoughtful and compelling outsider folk of the last 20 years, mainly as Palace Music and Bonnie Prince Billy.
The other half of this double bill of extraordinary pairings features BILL FRISELL, who “plays the guitar like Miles Davis played the trumpet: in the hands of such radical thinkers, their instruments simply become different animals,” (New Yorker) and folk revivalist SAM AMIDON, whose “highly personal approach opens a window on the American past and lets us feel it like nothing else around.” (NPR) Frisell is renowned as perhaps the greatest guitarist of his generation, a humble shaman with a seemingly unlimited capacity for incorporating diverse American roots traditions into jazz. Sam Amidon is among the most original folk artists working today—quite a feat, considering much of his work is re-imagining traditional songs. Amidon and Frisell have performed together in the past; this is the first time they’ve done so with the Bill Frisell Trio, which includes two of NYC’s most outstanding musicians: the drummer Kenny Wollesen and the mulit-instrumentalist Tony Scherr.