Cheltenham Jazz Festival: Bill Frisell & Eyvind Kang @ Cheltenham Town Hall - May 2

Bill Frisell (guitar); Eyvind Kang (viola)

A nearly empty stage with a guitar, recumbent on a stool and a small collection of fluffy toys next to a mic stand. This was not going to be the most extravagant show at the Festival. Frisell and Kang wander on stage, acknowledge the applause, sit down and begin. Frisell leads off strumming with increasing menace whilst Kang produces long drones on his instrument, the eventual pastoral excursions on the viola are picked up and developed by Frisell whose picking starts to approximate a melody line but he reverts to rising and falling chords following the viola and then a simple melody line of repeated motif is slightly embellished with a top string rhythm. It is intensely fragile music.

They flow into a livelier, more down-home second piece with Kang plucking and more elaborate picking by Frisell. There’s Americana folk lurking in there. Kang livens it up with some folksy fiddle playing (on viola). This feels as delicate and ephemeral as only a truly improvised performance can, (though the players frequent reference to the scores on the stool in front of them undermine that impression). As they play on, Kang’s ‘Gothic’ viola contrasts with Frisell’s chiming notes. Kang is persistent, playing and developing similar passages whereas Frisell is more dramatic, building climaxes and allowing them to fall away as if he’s searching for something. A fragile waltz evolves, a soundtrack to a winter nature film, that almost fades to an end but picks up again and Frisell’s harmonics lead into a knotty run. Kang is lush and romantic, Frisell holds back before an exchange that is a meeting of moods.

Another piece, (or a part of one ongoing piece) suggestive of Patsy Cline’s Crazy is almost soporifically relaxed, hypnotic and playful at the same time. (Don’t ask me how, you had to be there). They manage to paint wide panoramas with just the two instruments. Gently plucked closing notes and the silence is felt as a release in the room.

The next item is more disjointed and angular, hinting at Monk, with the viola sharp and warning. It has a blues pulse to it and some forward drive with Kang adding colour and depth between Frisell’s phrases. Their notes intertwine in a shared spiral that develops into them playing closely in sync. This is followed by a piece that opens with mournful viola, broad and sweeping. Closely played delicate changes seem to reach a point of departure with Frisell’s full round notes echoed faithfully in Kang’s melody and vice versa. Anything firmer that develops feels so precarious. Suddenly, both are playing with more body, more substance. The viola is more solid, Frisell is still probing, twanging his top string and gently picking out runs below, but there’s no fluidity to his playing as there is with Kang’s. Kang is building whole structures whilst Frisell seems constrained, unable to move on.

The closing piece immediately feels more developed and it turns into You Only Live Twice with both sharing the theme before Frisell adds some embellishment of his own and some extra layers of rhythm. It’s dramatic, but playful as well and works as a release from what has gone before and that release is there again after a tightness builds, closely following the original with Kang providing most of the meat of the matter and Frisell the drama, Kang adds the romantic yearning. Where is Nancy Sinatra, or even a Puppini Sister when you need one? Dave Sayer