FRIDAY, JAN. 11

Bill Frisell is a unique voice in American jazz guitar, and for that reason alone he deserves to be listened to. His rhythmic counterpart and longtime collaborator Joey Baron is a musician of startling facility, equally capable tossing out be-bop fills or smashing in eardrums by playing blast beats, as he did with Frisell in John Zorn’s Naked City. On Friday night they appeared together at Culver City’s Jazz Bakery, thirty minutes late and a few experiments short. Opening with a ring-modulated guitar sound reminiscent of his early ‘80s album Smash And Scatteration, Frisell stood almost motionless stage left, looking like a bespectacled cactus. With a thinly strung, light blue semi-hollowbody Telecaster in hand and a small set of pedals at his feet, Frisell asserted himself as the best country-folk accompanist in jazz. He displayed little fire and took fewer chances, fretting through improvisations and back catalogue tunes. Opposite him, beater Baron whittled away on oversized chopsticks, mallets and overturned cymbals, once going so far as to strike the underside of a drum after wedging his stick between it and the ground. Baron was consistently sensitive and rhythmically dense when not forced into the ‘you play a chord, I’ll play a beat’ dichotomy. An oblong interpretation of ‘Days of Wine and Roses’ fermented a few genuine surprises, but unfortunately the final eight minutes of the set consisted of Frisell playing a repetitive four-chord progression as Baron and the audience were forced to work the rest out for themselves. (CS)