A night with Bill Frisell and biographer Philip Watson in conversation about the definitive biography of the guitar icon and Grammy Award-winning artist.
The definitive biography of guitar icon and Grammy Award-winning artist Bill Frisell.
Over a period of forty-five years, Bill Frisell has established himself as one of the most innovative and influential musicians at work today. A quietly revolutionary guitar hero for our genre-blurring times, he connects to a diverse range of artists and admirers, including Paul Simon, Elvis Costello, Rhiannon Giddens, Gus Van Sant and Justin Vernon of Bon Iver, all of whom feature in this book....
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A night with Bill Frisell and biographer Philip Watson in conversation about the definitive biography of the guitar icon and Grammy Award-winning artist.
The definitive biography of guitar icon and Grammy Award-winning artist Bill Frisell.
Over a period of forty-five years, Bill Frisell has established himself as one of the most innovative and influential musicians at work today. A quietly revolutionary guitar hero for our genre-blurring times, he connects to a diverse range of artists and admirers, including Paul Simon, Elvis Costello, Rhiannon Giddens, Gus Van Sant and Justin Vernon of Bon Iver, all of whom feature in this book.
A vital addition to any music lover’s book collection, Bill Frisell, Beautiful Dreamer tells the legendary guitarist’s story for the first time.
‘Stuffed with musical encounters, so many that every couple of pages there’s an unheard Frisell recording for the reader to chase down.’ NEW YORKER
‘Bill Frisell, Beautiful Dreamer is the definitive biography.’ BILL MILKOWSKI, DOWNBEAT
‘Superb . . . the book races along like Sonny Rollins in full sail. Like subject, like writer: this is super-articulate, adventurous prose.’ PERSPECTIVE
‘[Watson’s] writing balances unbridled passion and dispassionate research nearly as deftly as Mr. Frisell’s playing does sound and silence . . . compelling.’ WALL STREET JOURNAL
Philip Watson is an experienced journalist who has mostly made his living as a feature writer. He has covered a broad range of subjects – from 9/11 to the Poker Million tournament, Miles Davis to (a film version of) James Joyce’s Ulysses, British soldiers injured in Afghanistan to the Peace One Day campaign – for numerous UK and Irish newspapers and magazines, including GQ, where he was formerly deputy editor, and Esquire, where he was editor-at-large. Philip has also written extensively about music, jazz in particular; musicians he has interviewed include Elvis Costello, Gil Scott-Heron, McCoy Tyner, Ali Farka Touré, Wynton Marsalis and Maria Schneider. His first book, Bill Frisell, Beautiful Dreamer, a biography of the groundbreaking and Grammy Award-winning guitarist, was published by Faber in the spring of 2022. New York composer, saxophonist and experimentalist John Zorn described it as “a beautiful and long overdue portrait of one of America’s true living cultural treasures.”
Bill Frisell’s career as a guitarist and composer has spanned more than 40 years and many celebrated recordings, whose catalog has been cited by Downbeat as "the best recorded output of the decade."
Recognized as one of America’s 21 most vital and productive performing artists, Frisell was named an inaugural Doris Duke Artist in 2012. He is also a recipient of grants from United States Artists, Meet the Composer among others. In 2016, he was a beneficiary of the first FreshGrass Composition commission to preserve and support innovative grassroots music. Upon San Francisco Jazz opening their doors in 2013, he served as one of their Resident Artistic Directors. Bill is also the subject of a new documentary film by director Emma Franz, entitled Bill Frisell: A Portrait, which examines his creative process in depth.
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