Bill Frisell

There’s always this sound out there that’s just a little beyond my reach and that just sort of keeps me going.

Music is the tool to express life – and all that makes a difference.

I like the music. I love it and live it in fact, but for me the business part just plain stinks.

I started playing piano when I was 6. And I knew that wanted to be involved in that form of expression, whether it was through music, or acting, or dancing, or painting, or writing.

Jazz is music made by and for people who have chosen to feel good in spite of conditions.

I think the one thing that I’ve learned is that you cannot predict what’s going to happen. You can’t sit back and try to figure out what people want or leave it up to them to decide. When we all started in this business we would dictate to the audience what was great and they picked up on that based on the fact that we believed that it was great. But that’s all changed. What’s happened in the last ten years or so because is that the technology now means that everyone with a computer can make music and I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or not.

It’s easier to copy someone else than to find out how to avoid sounding like someone else.

It’s performing without any really set basis for the lines and the content as such emotionally or, specifically, musically. And if you sit down and contemplate what you’re going to do, and take five hours to write five minutes of music, then it’s composed music. Therefore I would put it in the classical or serious, whatever you want to call it, written-music category. So there’s composed music and there’s jazz. And to me anybody that makes music using the process that we are using in Jazz, is playing Jazz.

I’ve had those people very interested in my writing. Since I think of myself as a composer, I feel really good. I’ve had lots of guys call me up. I’ve gotten two or three commissions to write things. I’ve written lots of movie scores.

In fact, I heard Bird first, and had got well into listening to him. You know, it’s the kind of accidental thing that awareness of a player is: what’s available, what somebody happens to play for you.

Early on, I figured out that when the top of a guitar is vibrating and a string is vibrating, you’ve got a conflict. One of them has got to stop, and it can’t be the string, because that’s making the sound. So in 1934, I asked the Larson Brothers—Chicago instrument makers—to build me a guitar with a half-inch-thick maple top and no f-holes. They thought I was crazy.

I’ve never recorded anything I didn’t like.

If you can’t get your songs to people one way, you have to find another.

Trios offer simple instrumentation, but the orchestral possibilities are so profound.

I’m always thinking about creating. My future starts when I wake up in the morning and see the light. Then I’m grateful.

Always look ahead, but never look back.