Those rough-hewn faces…that rolling river of sound…
For a still-evolving enterprise, Bill Frisell’s Disfarmer Project displayed a mighty solid foundation at Duke University. Inspired by the unconventional portrait photography of Mark Disfarmer, Frisell’s music was designed to illuminate a set of early 20th-century images, effectively making the case for their timeless quality.
Frisell and company — steel guitarist Greg Leisz, violinist Jenny Scheinman, and bassist Viktor Krauss — were flanked by multiple screens with continually shifting displays of Disfarmer’s work. It would be hard to imagine musicians more ideally suited to interpreting America’s cultural complexity.
As if warning of tangled undercurrents to come, the music began on an abstract note. The portraits appeared standard enough at first, if a bit anchored in the past by dress and demeanor. Gradually, however, knotty emotional patterns emerged — the curl of a lip, the crease of a jacket, relaxed or awkward stance and contact. The music entered with a similar theme of discord — atonal lines and hesitant harmony.
Then, in a bracing turn, Frisell cleared a path of light and sound, via Hank Williams’ “Lost Highway”. For the next hour or so, an alternately down-home and introspective revival ensued — the images issuing the call, the musicians offering a richly resonant response.
Our rural national songbook set the signposts, as “That’s Alright Mama”, “Jeannie With The Light Brown Hair” and “Pretty Polly” took turns interpreting the visual display. Frisell was alternately sweet and searing, improvising Hank’s tears and Arthur Crudup’s swagger with masterful facility. Leisz’s peerless steel guitar playing evoked blue skies and barrooms, with love for both. Scheinman was equally at home in heavenward flight and dueling strings, confidently matching her partners in cross-genre songcraft. Though a longtime Frisell collaborator, Krauss had been on board this particular train for only a short time, but he enhanced each spontaneous line while supplying the ideal grounding for the evening’s clear narrative flow.
From such alchemy, worlds are reborn. As the final screen images of hard-earned honest smiles and the echoes of country blues faded in the auditorium, Disfarmer’s world — with all its joys and complicated shadows — had found its true kinship with our own.
