Started the evening out with the third Rochester Jazz Festival appearance of Bill Frisell. Here with his "Beautiful Dreamers" project with Rudy Royston on drums and Eyvind Kang on violin viola, Frisell was what I always expect when I hear Bill Frisell … unexpected. The opening number of the first set "began" when I noticed that Frisell and Kang's "tuning" was beginning to develop a pattern. The group then layered and developed these patterns further. He was mining a lot of sources as the set list that Frisell shared with Jeff Spevak (which was published in the mobile version of Jeff Spevak's article Bill Frisell experiments with the wild side, but didn't make the final article) shows: (1) "Nobody's Fault But Mine," Blind Willie Johnson; (2) Untitled, Frisell; (3) "Subconscious-Lee," Lee Konitz; (4) "St. Louis Blues," W.C. Handy; (5) "Keep on the Sunny Side," The Carter Family; (6) "Baba Drame," Boubacar Traoré; and Encore: "Benny's Bugle," Benny Goodman, the Charlie Christian version.
I then took the now well-worn path from Kilbourn Hall to the Reformation Church to catch ECM artists KUÀRA, which is Finnish drummer Markku Ounaskari and pianist Samuli Mikkonen, with Norwegian trumpeter & singer Per Jørgensen. This bass-less trio created beautiful, complex and sometimes challenging sounds in that space as they explored the folk music of an obscure area of Finland and Russian psalms found on their new disc. It was one of those concerts where the audience does not have a point to express their appreciation and, sometimes, expresses it at odd times not knowing whether the artists are done or not. Jørgensen played trumpet, hand drum and sang, ranging from the low drone of throat singing to beautiful vocalizing of the unknown tongue of the residents of that area.
Floated around after that, catching a couple of songs by k.d. lang and the Siss Boom Bang band in Kodak Hall in Eastman Theatre and a bit of the Slavic Soul Party. Tonight, it's Kenny Barron in Kilbourn, Tonbruket at the Reformation Church (again that well-worn path) and closing out with In the Country at Montage, with the interspersed time undecided. After hours… maybe…
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