In My Dreams Bill Frisell

• 1 Trapped in the Sky (96kHz) 02:07
• 2 When We Go (Live) 07:52
• 3 In My Dreams (Live) 05:12
• 4 Isfahan (Live) 06:33
• 5 Give Me a Home (96kHz) 02:53
• 6 Why? (96kHz) 03:17
• 7 Curtis (a year and a day) (Live) 07:24
• 8 Hard Times (Live) 04:42
• 9 Again (Live) 06:16
• 10 Small Hands (Live) 06:19
• 11 Never Too Late (96kHz) 04:06
• 12 Home on the Range (Live) 05:37
• Total Runtime 01:02:18

Info for In My Dreams

Bill Frisell releases his fifth Blue Note album "In My Dreams". A family reunion of sorts that brings some of the acclaimed guitarist’s closest friends together into a unique sextet featuring Jenny Scheinman on violin, Eyvind Kang on viola, Hank Roberts on cello, Thomas Morgan on bass, and Rudy Royston on drums. Though their deep musical history goes back decades, the musicians had never performed together in this particular configuration, and together they travel wide expanses of American music including Jazz and Americana staples, as well as Frisell originals including the title track “In My Dreams”

Frisell likes to remember a dream he had that transformed the way he thinks about music and his instrument. It occurred more than three decades ago, but he can recall it today as if he just snapped awake, roused by a mix of fright and awe. In the dream, Frisell finds himself in a breathtaking library surrounded by stacks of leather-bound volumes and antiquities. At the center of the room is a table, and seated around the table are several monk-like figures in hoods. They seem forbidding at first, but quickly reveal themselves as warm and welcoming. “We want to show you what things really are,” they say. “First, we’d like to show you what colors really look like.”

Frisell narrates: “So they open this little box and take out these small blocks. They point to one and say, ‘This is what red looks like.’ And it’s the most intense, beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. Then they say, ‘We know you’re a musician, so we’d like you to hear what real music sounds like.’ It felt like some sort of tube was going into my forehead and moving around, and it was the most incredible sound I’d ever heard. Nino Rota, Thelonious Monk, Sonny Rollins, Charles Ives, Jimi Hendrix, Hank Williams, Andrés Segovia, Robert Johnson — all this music I love, but all the parts were crystal clear. And then I woke up.”

Ever since, Frisell has been chasing the ideal of purity and vibrancy he experienced that evening in twilight. And he’s gotten closer than ever with the group of trusted collaborators he’s assembled for In My Dreams. “There have been times, over the years,” Frisell says, “where I’d be playing with these guys and it felt like I was approaching that dream I had all those years ago, where all that music was happening simultaneously.”

One way to see In My Dreams is as a meeting of two core groups. The first is the guitarist’s trio with Morgan and Royston, most recently heard on Frisell’s 2020 LP Valentine. The second is Frisell’s go-to string section, for lack of a better term, featuring Scheinman, Kang and Roberts, which debuted as a unit 20 years ago on Richter 858. A more accurate way to describe the lineup is to say that these are some of Bill Frisell’s favorite musicians, who’ve crisscrossed in his performances and recordings for decades, fostering a deep camaraderie. Frisell, “Throughout all these years, this group has just been sort of popping up as my guys, you know?”

That chemistry is evident throughout In My Dreams, which employs an elastic and inspired approach to production, through the oversight of producer Lee Townsend and veteran engineer Adam Muñoz. All of the core tracks were recorded live in 2025, at concerts in Brooklyn, Denver and New Haven. For certain songs, additional recording took place under Muñoz’s guidance at Opus Studios, in Berkeley, Calif. — and not simple note corrections, but full sections and soundscapes. The result is an ingenious hybrid recording, flawlessly melding the spontaneity of live performance with the sonic craft that can only be achieved in the studio.

Half of In My Dreams comprises new, previously unrecorded original music, including such delights as the title track, a dead ringer for the seductive anxiety of Bernard Herrmann’s Hitchcock scores. (It also summons up the score that Frisell contributed to Gus Van Sant’s Psycho remake.) Herrmann, says Frisell, is “huge for me,” and lists him as an influence in composing and arranging alongside Nino Rota, Michael Gibbs, Jonny Greenwood and others. But there’s also something uniquely Frisellian about all of this new writing, from the opening “Trapped in the Sky,” an exercise in noirish harmony for violin and viola, to “Curtis (a year and a day),” an uncanny tribute to the beloved trombonist Curtis Fowlkes, written with Kang’s sound in mind.

The other half of this double album includes songs — covers as well as originals — that he’s returned to over the years, drawing from them new possibilities or dialing back his advanced reharmonizations in favor of unfettered melody. “Isfahan,” which Frisell has never before included on a proper album, allows the guitarist to pay homage to Billy Strayhorn, a pathbreaking genius he’s been increasingly fascinated by over the past two decades. “When I hear his music, it’s like, ‘How can a human being exist on this level?’” Frisell says. “I feel like I spent my whole life just touching on that song, and it took me forever to get to the point where I could actually play it on a gig.”

Other album highlights — “Hard Times,” “Home on the Range,” Frisell’s interpolation of the latter, titled “Give Me a Home” — deliver the guitarist’s trademark vision of America as a dreamlike antique mall, a surreal signature aesthetic born of personal history. Of “Home on the Range,” he says, “I grew up in Colorado, so that’s one of those songs that was probably somehow filtering in when I was in the womb. It’s just been around my whole life.” “When We Go,” which debuted on the guitarist’s 1985 ECM album, Rambler, resurfaces here like an archaeological revelation — early evidence of that instantly identifiable Frisell soundworld, at once folksy, whimsical, smart and daringly progressive.

“When We Go” will continue to evolve, expand and improve, as all of Frisell’s music does in the hands of his cherished colleagues. “I’ve got more gigs lined up with this ensemble,” he says, “and I just know that at that first gig, I’m going to say, ‘I wish we had that on the record!’ That always happens.”

Bill Frisell, electric and acoustic guitars, loops
Thomas Morgan, bass
Rudy Royston, drums
Jenny Scheinman, violin
Eyvind Kang, viola
Hank Roberts, cello

Tracks 1/5/7: Recorded by Joseph Branciforte at Roulette Intermedium, Brooklyn, NY February 8, 2025
Tracks 6/11: Recorded by Nick Lloyd at Firehouse 12, New Haven, CT on February 6, 2025
Tracks 2/3/4/8/9/10/12: Recorded by Kevin Lee at The Newman Center, Denver, CO on April 3, 2025
Mixed and edited by Adam Muñoz at Opus Studios, Berkeley, CA
Produced by Lee Townsend

Please Note: We offer this album in its native sampling rate of 48kHz, 24-bit. The provided 96kHz version was up-sampled and offers no audible value! This album consists of different sampling rates. See track list - behind each track you'll find the sampling rate.

Bill Frisell
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."

Released March of ’18, Frisell’s latest album for OKeh/Sony is a solo album titled, Music IS - "Taken as a whole, the album beautifully encapsulates Frisell’s depth and range in all its meditative glory."- Chicago Reader. It was recorded in August, 2017 at Tucker Martine’s Flora Recording and Playback studio in Portland, Oregon and produced by longtime collaborator Lee Townsend. All of the compositions on Music IS were written by Frisell, some of them brand new – Change in the Air, Thankful, What Do You Want, Miss You and Go Happy Lucky – others being solo adaptations of now classic original compositions he had previously recorded, such as Ron Carter, Pretty Stars, Monica Jane, and The Pioneers. In Line, and Rambler are from Frisell’s first two ECM albums.

Frisell’s previous project, the Grammy nominated When You Wish Upon a Star also with OKeh/Sony, germinated at Lincoln Center during his two-year appointment as guest curator for the Roots of Americana series (September ’13 – May ’15). It features Frisell with vocalist Petra Haden, Eyvind Kang (viola), Thomas Morgan (bass) and Rudy Royston (drums) performing Frisell’s arrangements and interpretations of Music from Film and Television. Jazz Times described the project as follows: "unforgettable themes are the real draw here, reconfigured with ingenuity, wit and affection by Frisell and a terrific group."

"Frisell has had a lot of practice putting high concept into a humble package. Long hailed as one of the most distinctive and original improvising guitarists of our time, he has also earned a reputation for teasing out thematic connections with his music... There’s a reason that Jazz at Lincoln Center had him program a series called Roots of Americana." - New York Times

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.

This album contains no booklet.