Jazz Reviews : Frissell a Mix-Master of Guitar Styles

Dissimilitude is Bill Frissell’s watchword.

Working Wednesday at At My Place in Santa Monica, the New York-based guitarist led his quartet--Hank Roberts on cello, Kermit Driscoll on bass and Joey Baron on drums--through a smorgasbord of popular musics. One heard expressionistic snippets of Kurt Weill-ish German cabaret tomes, tangoes, punchy waltzes, heavy metal trio wails, soothing country-ish ditties, classic Western swing, martial rhythms, and very, very occasionally, some of the straight-ahead spang-a-lang beat that underpins much of mainstream jazz.

Thanks to the leader’s keen compositional sense, these wide-ranging moods were woven together into interesting tonal fabrics that mostly held up. These selections were delivered with a remarkable level of cohesion as the five-year-old group moved seamlessly not only between works--more than once one tune led without pause into the next--but within the shifting moods that many pieces presented.

The songs ran from simple--the second encore, “The Way Home” was a plain pretty country-tinged number--to complicated: a through-composed number where an angular bass-line from Driscoll, chunky chords from Frissell and Roberts plus an insistent time feel from Baron battled to a draw.

As a soloist, Frissell can really come across--he has a pure, sweetwater tone that is delightful, and he has a knack for concocting compelling chordal phrases--and he can run dry, sometimes resorting to ear-flinching hi-end guitar shrieks when all else fails. Driscoll, who got a gorgeous, resonant tone when he wanted to, was also inconsistent, offering scratchy mutterings that contrast with appealing longer tones. For their part, Driscoll and Baron weren’t just accompanists--they added contrapuntal melodies and rhythms at almost every turn.

The hard-to-pigeonhole Frissell continues to intrigue. His diverse and musical style may not suit all ears, but he is definitely a leader among those modern musicians who find the pursuit of a single direction unfathomable.