Bill Frisell Quotations

First I was a European-style player, then I was a downtown 'noise guy,' and now some people call me an Americana guy.

I hate labels; the problem is that if you say you're one thing, it's hard for people to imagine you as something else. Music is way more complicated than that.

I spend a lot of time copying saxophone players and trumpet players. Not to say that it is not important to listen to guitar players, but there's so much music out there and so many possibilities. I like anyone who plays any instrument.

In so many ways, it feels the same now when I play as the very first time I picked up the instrument. There's always this sound out there that's just a little bit beyond my reach and I'm trying to get there and that just sort of keeps me going.

It's incredible how one song or even one little phrase or just a few notes, if you really concentrate on it, can be a kaleidoscope of possibility.

Music doesn't hurt anybody, that's what's amazing. Everything is in there, every kind of human emotion, from the darkest to the lightest. And it has power. Unbelievable power.

I can write the stuff and play it myself and have something in my head, but the best feeling is when somebody else plays it and they're hearing something other than what I'm hearing.

I've been lucky with the circle of people I'm playing with. We've played enough that there's a language we talk with each other when we play.

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

Every time I play with someone, not just a new person, but someone I've been with all along, that's where I really learn.

I love listening to other musicians and seeing what they do to gain their distinctive respective sounds and edge.

There's so much music out there & so many possibilities. I like anyone who plays any instrument.

I feel so lucky that my high school was right in the middle of Denver, which is one of those sort of segregated towns, with black and white and Hispanic neighborhoods. But the school I went to was right in the middle of the whole thing.

I spend a lot of time copying saxophone players and trumpet players.

I do know the older I get, the more I'm referencing music I heard as a kid.

I'm basically a pretty shy person and I don't dance or get into fights. But there are all these things inside me that get out when I perform. It's like a real world when I play, here I can do all the things that I can't do in real life.

For me the music community was always like a model for what could be. The way people would play together, just harmony and being - old guys and young guys, black guys and white guys. It was setting an example for what the rest of us could be.

I used to edit myself. If something seemed super-simple I had to make it more complicated. Now I'm trying to let what's in there come out and acknowledge where I come from. I'm trying to make it more. ..true.

To me, jazz is a place where anything is possible.

"Music, for me, has always been a place where anything is possible--a refuge, a magical world where anyone can go, where all kinds of people can come together, and anything can happen. We are limited only by our imaginations.