It’s a new year, and I choose to start it with a Bill Frisell video

 

Welcome to 2019.  Let’s begin with a Bill Frisell video.

This song is called “Egg Radio” and it appears on Frisell’s excellent 1995 recording Quartet.  I saw that quartet (of Frisell, trumpeter Ron Miles, trombonist Curtis Fowlkes and violinist-tubist Eyvind Kang) perform at the Boulder Theater in Colorado shortly after this album was released.  It was arguably the greatest concert I’ve ever seen, measured in terms of the pieces performed, where I was at in my discovery of Bill Frisell’s music, the wonderful venue and its location, and everything that was going on in my life at the time and especially on that day, and how significant all of those things remain even now as I type this out.

Their performance of this song nearly brought me to tears.  Frisell is magic with a melody, so expertly crafted but delivered with exquisite care and thoughtfulness, and how his quartet contentedly sighed the melody of “Egg Radio” that night while balancing it with a rocking cadence like the most comforting lullaby was how I wanted my heart to beat for the rest of my life.

This song, both from the studio recording and that live performance in Boulder, Colorado, is forever etched on my timeline.  I hope the new year brings all of us a few moments just like that.  We all deserve to attain that kind of happiness.

Welcome to 2019.  Thanks for joining me.