Description
Jazz guitarist Bill Frisell and bassist Thomas Morgan reunite for this collaborative album (recorded at New York City’s Village Vanguard) after first appearing together on 2017’s Small Town. The new set includes their take on the James Bond theme “You Only Live Twice” as well as “In the Wee Small Hours Of The Morning,” popularized by Frank Sinatra.
Whether the music is original, or the interpretation of something traditional or sourced from the Great American Songbook, pop hits or jazz standards, with two musicians as clearly connected as Frisell and Morgan, the only thing that’s predictable is their sheer unpredictability. Epistrophy may swing a little more, and lean a little heavier on the jazz tradition (even when interpreting traditional folk music like “Red River Valley”) than its companion Small Town, but taken together, these two extraordinary recordings more fully and completely reveal this unique duo’s broad musical purview. Epistrophy is a soft, intimate album with vast subtleties waiting to be uncovered.
