Holding On: A Conversation with Bill Frisell on ‘In My Dreams’

Throughout the more than three hundred thousand years of human existence, the human mind has dreamt. Dreams are such a central part of the human condition that they require little definition. Yet, across millennia, with billions of people dreaming somewhere between four and six times a night, a great mystery remains over what truly happens in the realm of dreams. Ancient Egyptians Greeks, and several Aboriginal cultures all viewed dreams as messages from the spirit world. By the Eighteenth Century, Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung posited that nocturnal imagery is a manifestation of the unconscious mind. More recently, scientists have tied them to cognitive functions such as memory consolidation and emotional regulation. Part of the enduring secrecy of the true meaning of dreams comes from how often they do not fully transition into waking life. Noradrenaline and serotonin exterminate ninety-five percent of dreams before the dreamer awakes. But, even so, a few somehow still survive the journey and manifest into something tangible. And when these dreams do miraculously endure, they can provide great beauty to this world. In the words of Vincent Van Gogh, “I dream of painting and then I paint my dream.” Similarly, they provide a great foundation for Bill Frisell’s sextet recording, In My Dreams (Blue Note, 2026).

The fleetingness of dreams has heavily shaped Frisell’s creative expression over the last three decades, after a specific vision completely changed how he perceives his art and his instrument. In his dream, he found himself in a massive library where monk-like figures shared with him what color really looked like, showing him the most intensely beautiful images imaginable. Then the figures shared with him how “music really sounds,” exposing the guitarist to the most incredible sound he had ever heard. He experienced all of the music he loves blended into a single sound before he was rudely thrust awake. Though the magical encounter ended, his memory of it remained a critical part of his work. Shadows of the thought emerged in the fantastic sextet recording, Blues Dream (Nonesuch, 2001). The first time this author was ever exposed to the guitarist’s masterfulness, Blues smoothly trotted along the dirt path from the open fields of Americana to the small nightclubs of the Manhattan Downtown. Several years later came Beautiful Dreamers (Savoy, 2010), a trio outing with Eyvind Kang and Rudy Royston, that captures the woozy otherworldliness of dreams. It also provided a name for Phillip Watson’s authoritative biography on the artist, Beautiful Dreamer: The Guitarist Who Changed the Sound of American Music (Faber & Faber, 2022). 

But where these prior works left glimpses of Frisell’s mysterious dream, In My Dreams narratively dives deep into the wondrous world of a dreamscape. “Trapped in the Sky” opens the album in a space of transportation. Viola and violin pass as flashes of light amidst the spatial silence of a dark bedroom. “When We Go” starts with discordant guitar whirs and bends, confirming the listener is no longer home. A relaxed walk leads to a space where figures gently sway in the moonlight as fireflies drift past open fields nearby. The title track provides a contemplative meditation on the listener’s newfound environment. It is here where things are contrastingly both strange and familiar. Disorienting yet comforting. And it is all presented with a tinge of longing elusiveness, perhaps a recognition that the dreamer’s time in this space is only short-lived. And their end finally comes with the closer, “Home on the Range,” where the elegance of strings steadily pulls the listener back to the reality of their waking life, into a dark room of silence. The dream is over. 

Or is it? Do dreams ever truly end? Or, instead, are they merely repressed beneath the surface of our memory, waiting to be recalled once again? In the words of John Lennon, “A dream you dream alone is only a dream. A dream you dream together is reality.” Maybe we can return to the dream world by collectively carrying some of its remnants to us; by bringing some of the pieces of our fantasy to the here and now. Such an endeavor is especially likely where there is a telepathy between the dreamers, as on In My Dream. Frisell’s sextet is functionally a merging of two of his longstanding groups, the Richter 858 quartet – with violist Eyvind Kang, violinist Jenny Scheinman, and cellist Hank Roberts – and his trio with bassist Thomas Morgan and drummer Rudy Royston. But the ensemble is more than just an aggregate of its parts. Each of these artists has worked together for many years, often decades, and can converse with both Frisell and each other in ways not readily reducible to a written score. The combined band is flexible and malleable to its surroundings, an ideal outfit for capturing fleeting dreams. 

And on the album, that is precisely what they do. But they bring back more than just abstractions of a fantasy land. They bring a sonic hope to a chaotic world. The impending urgency of “Why” questions the division and pain of our world. “Curtis” suggests a deeper insight that celebrates diverse cultures – taking its cues from Middle Eastern traditional, klezmer, Eastern European folk songs, and gypsy jazz, among others – but rightfully treats them all as equal parts of a shared humanity. Billy Strayhorn’s “Isfahan” is a lush stroll through an opulent garden full of stunning, intricate turquoise and cobalt blue tiles, a space far from the totalitarianism and turmoil that currently reside in the Iranian city. But the most emotionally stirring moment comes in the album’s rendition of Stephen Foster’s “Hard Times.” The ensemble, with Roberts’ cello particularly playing a central role, shares an emotionally raw call for a better tomorrow. The song’s end with the shimmering light of Frisell’s echoing strings suggests such a future is only just over the horizon.  

Ultimately, with the album, Frisell explores dreams in their many facets. They are more than just subconscious manifestations and daytime yearnings, but also acts of quiet protest and a reflection on the artistic imagination writ large. In My Dreams brilliantly clears the haze out of sleepy minds.

PostGenre: Dreams are a reflection of our subconscious. What do you think your subconscious tells you about music that your conscious mind might miss?

Bill Frisell: There is something special about that moment right between when you’re awake and when you’re asleep. I have a recurring dream where I’m in some familiar place. Maybe it’s different each time, but something feels similar about it. But when I wake up, the image vanishes so fast. It’s gone, and I can’t get it back. It’s like a vapor that dissipates. I almost had it, but now it’s gone. I’m fascinated with trying to figure out how I can hold onto those dreams. 

Something similar happens when I play music. For me, playing music is the closest I get to dreaming while awake. There’s something about being in the midst of the music that brings it all out. 

But, unlike a dream, music is also something you can share with other people, which is an amazing thing. With music, there’s that part of dreaming, whatever that amazing state is, that I want to be in. There’s also the practical side. And it seems increasingly important that we’re all still able to dream that maybe things can be okay. The world is getting so out of whack. Somehow, we have to hold on to the ability to dream because if we don’t, we’re truly lost. I think that’s what some people are trying to snuff out. And I refuse to let them do that. In some ways, that dream is different. It’s more like Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream.” And somehow, some folks don’t get it.

PG: With the United States about to turn two hundred and fifty years old, it would seem our stated ideals – life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness – are things most people agree upon, even if they may disagree on how far away from them we are and how we get to them for everyone. Given that on several of your albums, including In My Dreams, you perform some songs that may be labeled as Americana or folk songs. Do you see your music as a push towards that idealized American dream?

BF: Well, my working with that music is not a conscious thing in that sense or even preconceived in that way. But all of that stuff seems to be in the nature of music itself, right?

My whole life in music is in a place where all those things you’re talking about actually happen. Both within the music itself and within the community of people I make music with. Of course, there are exceptions, but during my life, music has been the place where things make sense to me. And when you’re playing and listening to each other, you’re helping each other out. You’re adjusting to things changing and you’ve got to be on your toes. All these things are happening that are a model for what we could all be doing all the time. I’ve been so lucky to be welcomed into different musical communities. And to meet some of my heroes, as actual human beings. So many incredible things happen in music that I wish could be in everything. If everyone played an instrument, I don’t see how all the weird stuff going on in the world right now could be happening.

PG: In My Dreams was inspired by a particular dream you had thirty years ago of being in a vast library and hearing what music truly sounds like, hearing all your heroes in it at once. Do you feel you are getting closer to what you heard in that dream as you continue to play?

BF: Actually, not really. My search is still ongoing. I had that dream so long ago, but in the nature of music, actually reaching that dream is always beyond your reach. It will always stay that way. But I wish I could bring back that dream again. It was so intense. There was so much mystery in the dream, but also so much clarity. It was like everything I’d ever heard happening simultaneously; like a rod went through my forehead or something. 

As far as what I heard in that dream, I don’t think I’ll ever get there. But I’ll just keep trying. Finding that sound is a nice thing to strive towards. I feel that everything I’ve ever done marks the moment in time in which it is made. And by the time I move onto something else, the next moment, what I had done before does not move on with me. 

PG: In that same dream, you are also shown “what colors really look like.” Listening to your music can certainly paint images in their mind as they do. And on In My Dreams, you play “Isfahan” by Billy Strayhorn, whose longtime collaborator, Duke Ellington, had synesthesia. Do you see something visual when you’re making music?

BF: I don’t. But my wife [Carole D’Inverno], is a painter and whrn she hears sounds, she can see colors. But I don’t. 

For  me, there is some visual thing going on when I hear music, but I’m connecting it more with the drawings I made as a little kid. I used to draw cars and rocket ships. I would just put my pencil on paper and draw a line, then another line until my imagination took over, and I started finding some structural abstract things in what I am drawing. That kind of relates to the way that I compose music. The part of my imagination that draws a melody out of me is the same part that drew those shapes. It’s exactly the same part that would cause me to draw a line and have the line curve off in a particular direction.

When I write music, I still use a pencil on paper. I don’t use a computer.  There’s something about the feeling of the pencil on the paper that is very special. Using the most basic tools makes you very close, somehow, to the way that notes are coming out.

Man, yesterday I went to the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts and saw these incredible scores there. I saw the actual handwritten works of [Claude] Debussy, [Igor] Stravinsky, John Cage, [Edgar] Varèse, and [Ludwig von] Beethoven. I got to look right up close at the paper, and man, talk about wild. They were all so different from each other and all so beautiful. They were also all so visually connected to what the music sounds like. It was far out. I love seeing stuff that’s in people’s handwriting.

PG: That’s very cool. So, do you feel there is an element that is lost when people use computers to notate?

BF: Well, for me, I just don’t write with a computer because I never got it together. I know that using a computer could help me if I could just get things together and do it. 

I do think there’s a danger of letting the machine take over somehow. But if someone’s really hearing, it doesn’t matter exactly how they get it out, how they write it down. But, I don’t know, there’s something really beautiful to me about even just the friction of a pencil on paper.

PG: You are more directly connecting to the score itself when there is no computer in front of you. 

BF: Yeah. Most of the stuff I write down is pretty simple. But when you write things out by hand, things are spaced naturally according to the way you hear them. With a machine, you need to fight all the time with spacing. You need to move things around so that they’re in the right spot. When you are writing by hand, there’s a natural flow. I’m really sensitive to the way that notes are spaced out within a measure and how that affects your first impression of how you might phrase or play it.

PG: So, as far as writing music for In My Dreams in particular, the band is essentially a combination of two of your groups. Other than instrumentation, obviously, did you write for this ensemble differently than you would have for those groups separately?

BF: Well, what I love about playing with these people is that with them, the line between orchestrating, arranging, and composing starts to gets blurred. Everybody’s looking at the same stuff. I don’t write the music out like – “this is the violin part, and this is the viola part.” Instead, everyone knows all that is there. And then it is up to each to start making their own choices of what to do with it. That’s where things get really exciting. 

Maybe at the very beginning, we need to figure some things out; maybe who should play one part or another. Maybe we’ll have some kind of arrangement. But once things get going, things starts shifting around. Things become much more conversational and much more unpredictable, with people dropping out or coming in. It’s not just the soloist improvising, but everyone is  improvising together and orchestrating things together. And, because of that, the pieces aren’t really set to be exactly the same way each time. That’s what I’m hoping for: uncertainty and a chance for things to go off the rails. Everybody in the group knows one another, and we can make mistakes and not have those mistakes be a disaster. We can try to help each other out.

PG: So, it sounds like you rely more on the actual relationships and how long you have known each other than… 

BF: Even the instrumentation itself. Oh, yeah, for sure. It is all about who the personalities are. What’s really exciting to me is thinking about how things will sound if two particular people play a melody together. Or the feeling when I play in unison with somebody. There is an amazing thing that happens where if you really hook up with other musicians, you’re not just two separate people anymore. Together, you become this third person. It’s almost like a physical feeling. When my playing really hooks up with someone, I feel it in my fingers pressing down the string of my guitar. Things are buzzing or vibrating in a different way that makes this whole other voice happen. And when you start passing that around with all these different people, it’s pretty exciting.

PG: Were you surprised by what came out when you combined the two groups together compared to when they were separate?

BF: That surprise is part of the whole idea, I think.  I’m always hoping to be surprised. I have known all these people for so long. In the case of Hank, for more than fifty years now. We’ve all played together often, in all kinds of different combinations of groups. And we also have all been very close friends for long periods of time. Because of that background, things were familiar in a sense. We weren’t starting from scratch or something. But there’s also always something new that comes out. I’m always hoping – maybe shocked is too big a word – but to have the possibility of something happening that just blows your mind.

PG: And this particular album was recorded live, but later shaped in the studio. That must have added additional elements of possibility. 

BF: Yeah, I have never done anything quite like that before. The recordings came from three different sources. It started as a recording of us playing at Roulette in Brooklyn. My initial idea was that performance would be the album. But then, we got a gig at Firehouse 12 in New Haven, the night before the Roulette gig. After we realized there is also a great studio at Firehouse 12, we decided to record there too.

Then, a few weeks later, we had a gig in Denver. My friend had mentioned that they have a multi-track thing there. So, we decided we might as well record there, too. And, on that one, the band didn’t even know we were recording. Another thing that was cool was that I grew up in Denver, and my old guitar teacher was at that performance. The vibe was really high, and nobody was thinking about it being recorded. It was just a really great gig. 

But working with those three recordings in the studio was very interesting. The engineer, Adam Muñoz, was so great at figuring out ways to bring these recordings together. They were all recorded in completely different rooms, and he found ways to edit them into one thing, even within a single song. And they were so different, from the really small, acoustically dead space in New Haven to the big open space of Roulette. I think a lot of it ended up being from Denver, but then we switched back and forth.

PG: And now are about to go on tour, partly to celebrate your seventy-fifth birthday, and play these songs in a way that is different from both the studio-crafted versions and the original recordings that were used in the studio. 

BF: Yes. Every time after I make an album, the album becomes kind of a home base in a way. But the music changes as we play it live. One of the most exciting things to me is when an album’s done, and then we can see where the music goes from there. I’ve never been interested in making an album and touring the album in the sense of doing a song the same way we recorded it. Even with the same band, I’m always hoping that the music will ultimately go somewhere else. I want the music to be alive, awake to all of its possibilities. 

‘In My Dreams’ will be released on Blue Note Records on February 27, 2026. It can be purchased directly from the label. More information on Bill Frisell is available on his website.

Photo credit: Denver Jazz Fest