Bill Frisell - Bill Frisell Quartet (1996)

With his indelible, elastic tone, restless curiosity, and open-eared approach to music beyond the traditional corridors of jazz, guitarist Bill Frisell is among the most prolific and continually surprising improvisers alive. Quartet is built around a typically inventive, typically off-centered Frisell lineup including Ron Miles (trumpet, piccolo trumpet), Eyvind Kang (violin, tuba), and Curtis Fowlkes (trombone) who draw from a sonorous palette. By avoiding a conventional rhythm section and piano, Frisell and his confederates create a group sound with the intimacy of small jazz group while tapping the timbres of chamber music; the material (which includes pieces composed for a TV special built around friend Gary Larson's "Far Side" cartoons) is equally beyond category. --Sam Sutherland