Saw jazz-guitar legend, Bill Frisell, last night at a theater on the Duke campus.

The show was called the "Disfarmer Project", and was designed around a set of photographs taken by a reclusive and eccentric man who called himself "Mike Disfarmer" (as in "I am not a farmer"), who took hundreds of portraits of people in rural Arkansas in the late 30's and early 40's. He set up a studio on his back porch (Edit: and later in a storefront) and shot all his subjects in natural light. Though all of his shots are portraits, very few of the photos in the performance look formally posed; the people in many of them look as if they were caught off-guard, or have just been insulted, or told some horrible news. Many of them are scowling, grimacing, children look scared or surprised, though there were plenty of happy, clam, proud faces, too: couples of all ages, soldiers and sailors, groups of friends clowning around, huge families - but all of them are poor, rural working people. It's really quite an amazing collection - check out the gallery on that link above.

So, the songs were either written or adapted to be played while two giant screens (one on either side of the stage) showed these photos. The music was generally country-tinged, with a violinist; a dobro, lap-steel, mandolin, player; a stand-up bassist; and Frisell's guitar. I recognized two pieces from other contexts: one was the Elvis classic "That's All Right (mama)", and the other, I think, was "Pretty Polly", which can be found on the "Bill Frisell, Ron Carter, Paul Motian" record. Unfortunately, for me, while the musicians were certainly adept and the music was well-done, the whole thing was very formal - the four of them sat behind music stands, had absolutely no interaction with the audience, or barely even with each other. On one hand, that did give me a chance to focus on the photographs, which, again, were fantastic - and nicely presented; on the other hand, when I did watch the musicians, there wasn't anything to see. All were seated behind wide music stands (eye-level with my seat), rarely looking away from the sheet music, calmly playing their score. Frisell himself sat turned 90 deg to the audience, on the opposite side of the stage from my seat, so I could see what he was doing, sometimes, but few others in the audience could. While it's hard to say because I wasn't familiar with most of the songs, there didn't seem to be much improvisation - or if there was, there was little reaction between the players when someone did something interesting. It just all felt more like a chamber music recital than a band. Maybe that was the point and I my expectations were wrong. Either way, I ended up a bit underwhelmed by the band.

No pictures of the band. There wasn't anything to look at.

By the way, I think the little violin lick, where you play a set of very high but very dissonant notes, quickly, in kind of a hellish siren-like fashion needs to be outlawed. It's a cliche.