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Bill Frisell released a new LP, touring, playing special NYC events at MoMA and Lincoln Center (dates, stream)

Bill Frisell

Having just released a new album, Guitar in the Space Age!, and played a few shows with Sam Amidon including one at Music Hall of Williamsburg, six string virtuoso Bill Frisell will be staying busy for the foreseeable future. In addition to touring the new album all over the world, he’s got some other interesting things going on here in NYC.

On November 21 he’ll be at MoMA with Ron Miles, Tony Scherr, and Kenny Wollesen performing a live score (which Frisell composed) for the film The Great Flood:

The Great Flood is based on actual footage of the powerfully destructive Mississippi river flood of 1927–levees broke in over 100 places, engulfing thousands of square miles–and the revitalization of African American music that evolved as black southerners migrated Northward to escape the devastation. Using previously unseen outtakes from newsreel footage, Morrison reveals a society in the midst of a cultural, political and ecological upheaval. Guitarist Bill Frisell’s score embodies the catastrophic events, and serves as the emotional narrator of the film.

No word on tickets for that MoMA event just yet. Then in 2015, he’ll be doing four shows over two nights (January 16 & 17) at Lincoln Center (7 PM & 9:30 PM each night), a program called “When You Wish Upon A Star – Music From Film & Television”:

The role of music in classic film and television has always been considerable. With When You Wish Upon a Star, the ever-versatile guitarist Bill Frisell draws upon the sentimentality of music heard on screen and how it shapes and informs our emotional relationships to what we see.

Violist Eyvind Kang, bassist Thomas Morgan, drummer Rudy Royston, and singer/violinist Petra Haden will join Frisell for his interpretations of classics like “When You Wish Upon a Star,” “Alfie,” and “Moon River.” Tickets are on sale now.

Then he’ll return to Lincoln Center on May 29 & 30 (7 & 9:30 PM) for a program called “Bill Frisell: Up & Down The Mississippi”:

The famed Highway 61 travels alongside the Mississippi River, from the birthplace of jazz in New Orleans to the birthplace of guitarist Bill Frisell’s Swedish-American father in Two Harbors, Minnesota. Frisell, along with pianist Craig Taborn, trumpeter Ron Miles, saxophonist Greg Osby, and drummer Kenny Wollesen, embarks on a musical journey along the revered route, which Bob Dylan famously immortalized in 1965. They will revisit the Dixieland jazz of Davenport, Iowa native Bix Beiderbecke, the respective soul music and rock sound of Memphis-based Stax Records and Sun Records, and the Delta Blues of Mississippi. Join us for a profoundly historic sojourn realized by Frisell through this unique embodiment of the American musical landscape.

Tickets to those shows are on sale as well.

All Bill Frisell tour dates are listed, along with an Rdio stream of Guitar in the Space Age!, below…

Bill Frisell – 2014 Tour Dates
October 30, 2014 Ghent, Belgium Handelsbeurs Concertzaal
October 31, 2014 Tallinn, Estonia Russian Cultural Centre
November 1, 2014 Tampere, Finland Tullikamarin Klubi
November 2, 2014 Köln, Germany Stadtgarten
November 3, 2014 Rüsselsheim, Germany Theater Rüsselsheim
November 4, 2014 Bologna, Italy Unipol Auditorium
November 6, 2014 Sarajevo, Bosnia – Herzegovina Jazz Fest Sarajevo
November 7, 2014 Szeged, Hungary IH Event Center (former Youth House)
November 8, 2014 Budapest, Hungary Trafo – House of Contemporary Arts
November 10, 2014 Gothenburg, Sweden Stenhammarsalen, Gothenburg Concert Hall
November 11, 2014 Bielsko Biala, Poland Bielskie Centrum Kultury, Dom Muzyki
November 12, 2014 Bergen, Norway Sardinen USF
November 13, 2014 Oslo, Norway Cosmopolite Scene
November 14, 2014 Nevers, France Maison de la Culture
November 15, 2014 Cenon, France Le Rocher de Palmer
November 16, 2014 London, UK Barbican Hall
November 21, 2014 New York, NY MoMA
January 16, 2015 New York City Jazz at Lincoln Center
January 17, 2015 New York City Jazz at Lincoln Center
January 25, 2015 Phoenix, AZ Musical Instrument Museum
January 26, 2015 Santa Barbara, CA Lobero Theatre
January 31, 2015 Seattle, WA Showbox Theater
February 26, 2015 Germantown, TN Rhodes College
February 27, 2015 Washington, DC John F. Kennedy PAC
March 5, 2015 Northridge, CA Valley Performing Arts Center – Great Theater
May 8, 2015 Reykjavik, Iceland Mengi
May 9, 2015 Aarhus, Denmark Musikhuset
May 10, 2015 Torshavn, Faroe Islands The Nordic House
May 11, 2015 Oslo, Norway Victoria Hasjonall Jazzscene
May 13, 2015 Taseralik, Greenland Sisimiut Cultural Centre
May 15, 2015 Copenhagen, Denmark DR Concert Hall
May 29, 2015 New York City Jazz at Lincoln Center
May 30, 2015 New York City Jazz at Lincoln Center