History, Mystery | 
| Artist: Bill Frisell
Label: Nonesuch
Category: Music
List Price: $20.98
Buy New: $12.68
You Save: $8.30 (40%)
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Avg. Customer Rating:  9 reviews
Sales Rank: 1533
Media: Audio CD
Discs: 2
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.2
Dimensions (in): 5.6 x 5 x 0.5
MPN: 435964
UPC: 075597994377
EAN: 0075597994377
ASIN: B0016OMGFG
Release Date: May 13, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: BRAND NEW - Sealed IMPORT!!
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| Tracks:
Disc 1
| • | Imagination | | • | Probability Cloud | | • | Probability Cloud Part 2 | | • | Out of Body | | • | Struggle | | • | A Momentary Suspension of Doubt | | • | Onward | | • | Baba Drame | | • | What We Need | | • | A Change Is Gonna Come | | • | Jackie-Ing | | • | Show Me | | • | Boo and Scout | | • | Struggle Part 2 | | • | Heal | | • | Another Momentary Suspension of Doubt | | • | Probability Cloud |
Disc 2
| • | Monroe | | • | Lazy Robinson | | • | Question #1 | | • | Answer #1 | | • | Faces | | • | Sub-Conscious Lee | | • | Monroe Part 2 | | • | Question #2 | | • | Lazy Robinson Part 2 | | • | What We Need Part 2 | | • | Waltz For Baltimore | | • | Answer #2 | | • | Monroe Part 3 |
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| Editorial Reviews:
Album Description
Two CD set. Bill Frisell's History, Mystery is a series of short pieces, alternately elegant and playful, written by Frisell for an octet comprised of the guitarist himself and a group of longtime collaborators-friends. One evocative snippet melds into another to form a virtually seamless work that unfolds over the course of this double-disc package. It has an engrossingly theatrical quality, as if it were the score to some unseen play. Some of these tracks were originally written for Mysterio Sympatico, a 70-minute multi-media dialogue between Frisell and fellow Seattle based artist/comic book author Jim Woodring that premiered in 2002 at St. Ann's Warehouse in Brooklyn, featuring Frisell's compositions and Woodring's surreal projections, and that has subsequently been reprised around the country.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 4 more reviews...
Miniatures writ large July 22, 2008
Bill Frisell leads an octet over the 30 mostly short songs that make up "History, Mystery". He has a very good group -- Ron Miles on trumpet, Greg Hardy on sax, Jenny Schienman, Eyvind Kang & Hank Roberts on strings, Tony Scherr on bass, and Kenny Wollesen drumming. The songs generally have a creative dreaminess about them. The closest touchstone to this CD is Frisell's "Have A Little Faith". One thing contributing to dreaminess is that many of the songs show up more than once, so there's 40 seconds of "Answer #1" then later 110 seconds of "Answer #2". For all of the interesting miniatures, the longer songs with longer solos stand out -- "Baba Drame", "A Change Is Gonna Come", "Struggle", and "Waltz For Baltimore". Greg Hardy's solo in "A Change Is Gonna Come" is a highlight of the CD. Given that this CD has more players, Frisell's guitar is downplayed and he also doesn't step on his distortion pedal. It's more about Frisell the bandleader and composer and not the guitar hero. At 90 minutes, it's a long CD, but it doesn't seem long, which is a compliment. Bill Frisell fans should absolutely pick this one up. Anyone curious about Frisell would find this a good starting place as well.
reptetive, sad, pleasant July 15, 2008
The pieces of music on this album were done by a professional bunch of folk who for some time have been going on in a certain direction. It's the first Frisell album I ever bought, so I can't say much about the guy's past. Anyawy, most pieces on this album are sad. Some of them are repetitive and boring. Few have interesting compositions. All in all it's a pleasant affair. It's the kind of music some people would want to listen to sitting in an old rocking chair and looking at the post-sunsent with a glass of fine Cognac on the side, thinking about nothing in particular.
just a listener July 14, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
this is only the second recording released by frisell that i've heard that I like. musicians, most of them guitar players, sing praises to frisell's mastery as a jazz guitarist. i'm not a musician, just someone listening to music I like, mostly jazz, and i am attentive to the suggestions of my betters, the musicians. so i've been listening to frisell, hoping that some day the light bulb will go on and i'll understand what makes him a great jazz guitarist on his trio recordings, where his sound, to my untrained ears, drones on and on, and when it isn't droning it disturbs me with a hokeyness unexpected to jazz.
well, history, mystery isn't a trio outing, it's an octet of a string trio (the other recording by frisell I like is richter 858) and a jazz quartet and frisell on guitars, covering a range of americana, which is say some of it sounds hokey to me and some of it drones on, but with thirty selections there's breathing, exhaling and inhaling, and frisell's musical ideas and vision become democratic and not the stuff solely for the music specialist.
frisell is committed to american music of the united states. jazz is american music, arguably, america's only music, in which case any american music frisell plays is jazz. personally, not a form of reasoning i'm prepared to follow, nor am I saying this is frisell's question: is jazz americana music or is americana music jazz?
however, it is evident in history, mystery, more than in other frisell recordings i've heard, that he's working on something important musically, in the manner of charles ives.
 Circus music July 1, 2008
1 out of 8 found this review helpful
That's what my daughter called it, and she's right. I know Frisell makes these sort of discs occasionally, with bizarre horn arrangements, but I don't care for them. Heck, I can't even tell if there's a guitar anywhere in some of these tracks! I shouldn't have bought it before listening closely. My mistake. If you like Nashville, Good Dog Happy Man, Gone Like a Train, Blues Dream, The Willies, East/West, Unspeakable -- this is nothing like any of them.
 music for grownups June 23, 2008
4 out of 6 found this review helpful
Miles Davis once said that the secret to playing jazz was capturing the feel of children's rhymes like "Patty Cake." Bill Frisell captures it perfectly, and his music is simple, playful, and fun. It's also serious and complex. No contemporary jazz artist (other Keith Jarrett) puts me in touch with the poignancy of life the way Bill does, with the sweetness of being alive, with delight in what's transient and beautiful in the face of great loss and inevitable death. Bill (like Keith) understands how important it is to keep jazz connected to its roots in blues and American popular song. ("All Blues" would be a good title for Bill's entire oeuvre.) I think this is why I resonate more to his music than to trickier cutting edge jazz, which sometimes sounds like an unfun puzzle. History, Mystery has the kind of artistic scope of Blues Dream, but it's even larger, more natural, and more satisfying. It contains echoes of The Intercontinentals, but sounds deeper, less concepty, and more settled. The pairing of guitar and violin has an illustrious history: Rheinhardt and Grapelli, McLaughlin and Goodman, McLaughlin and Shankar, Abercrombie and Feldman. Add Frisell and Scheinman to that list.
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