Bill Frisell, In My Dreams Review

by Jeff Becker

More than three decades ago, guitarist Bill Frisell had a dream that transformed his relationship with music. In it, he entered a darkened building and found himself in a library where monk-like figures showed him what “real music sounds like,” crystal clear, with every element of Nino Rota, Thelonious Monk, Sonny Rollins, Charles Ives, Jimi Hendrix, and Hank Williams happening simultaneously. “Ever since,” Frisell says, “I’ve been chasing the ideal of purity and vibrancy he experienced that evening in twilight.” With his new Blue Note album In My Dreams, released in 2026, Frisell may have come closer than ever to that vision.

The album brings together two of Frisell’s most trusted ensembles with his rhythm section of bassist Thomas Morgan and drummer Rudy Royston, which first appeared on 2016’s When You Wish Upon a Star, and his go-to string trio featuring violinists Jenny Scheinman and Eyvind Kang alongside cellist Hank Roberts, who debuted as a unit 20 years ago on Richter 858. These are musicians who have crisscrossed in Frisell’s performances for decades. Frisell first met Roberts half a century ago at Berklee. “Throughout all these years, this group has just been sort of popping up as my guys,” Frisell notes. That chemistry is palpable throughout In My Dreams, a live-recorded collection of nine originals and four covers that functions as a continuously mellow, evolving narrative.

The album opens with “Trapped in the Sky,” a violin duet between Scheinman and Kang that establishes the ensemble’s ability to sustain a complete narrative texture without the rhythm section. This intimate chamber approach gives way to fuller integration on “When We Go,” drawn from Frisell’s 1985 debut Rambler. Here, Frisell uses loops to create a pastel setting for a moment in the intro before switching to a clean guitar tone for the melody. Morgan and Royston enter with a light Americana-meets-jazz feel, their rhythmic and harmonic layer becoming the looping texture that the ensemble plays around. At the two-minute mark, the strings enter, adding a third rhythmic layer that evolves over time. Scheinman’s solo and the string parts function as textural additions, demonstrating how the group operates as a single, breathing organism.

Frisell’s reimagining of standards reveals his creativity in creating temporal and textural landscapes. On “Isfahan,” the Ellington-Strayhorn classic, Frisell opens with Morgan and Royston in rubato style, using voice-leading chordal figures that relax into single lines climbing up the neck. This creates a call-and-response phrasing that gives the rubato time movement without a defined groove. At the halfway point, the feel is established and the groove locks in; the strings enter with counter-lines that maintain the dynamic with Frisell, evoking an orchestral sweep of textures and tones in a mellow energy. Similarly, Stephen Foster’s “Hard Times” offers a vamp-driven ballad, continuing a tradition from Bill Frisell with Dave Holland and Elvin Jones (2001) and Harmony (2019); here, it feels newly discovered through the ensemble’s collective sensitivity and colors.

The album’s emotional arc is driven by dynamic shifts in rhythm and texture. “Curtis (A Year and a Day)” opens with loops and effects creating a moody, introspective color, with Scheinman playing a “hunting melody.” A distinct pause marks the transition to a straight-eight groove established by Royston and Morgan. Scheinman’s solo moves from melodic to expressive sounds and shapes, culminating in glissandos and wide arpeggios. Royston’s drumming shapes the performance with elegance and direction of feel and pulse. The violin becomes the primary voice, moving the arc from dark rubato to a lighter groove and finally to cathartic release.

On “Again,” Royston opens with a tribal tom pattern building to a rumbling roll that arcs and then settles into establishing a relaxed waltz time feel. The melody passes mellowly between Frisell and the strings. Midway, Roberts’ cello downward glissando signals the shift to improvisation, with Roberts moving from bowed textures to pizzicato. Frisell remains warm and clear-toned; the pulse is never lost thanks to Royston’s textured drumming and Morgan’s harmonic grounding. This is not disorientation but controlled, rhythmic exploration.

The album closes with “Home on the Range,” deconstructing a folk standard into a mystical, polytonal meditation. After a coloring intro of effects and loops from Frisell, a simple acoustic strum enters. Frisell then joins with his tele in a supporting role with the melody that carries a polytonal character that alters the traditional tune. Towards the end, the mood pivots to mystical and mysterious via Frisell’s loops and effects. These textures grow, strings, guitar, bass, drums, moving to shade the loops and effects. Finally, strings hold a chord while loops continue, then fade to an emotional ending of dichotomy, blending the familiar folk tune with an abstract, dreamlike soundscape.

“There have been times, over the years,” Frisell says, “where I’d be playing with these guys, and it felt like I was approaching that dream I had all those years ago, where all that music was happening simultaneously.” In My Dreams is that approach realized. Through the subtle interplay of acoustic and electronic elements, Frisell and his ensemble demonstrate control over space, texture, and time.

In My Dreams reflects the power of a small ensemble to create vast, cinematic landscapes in a mellow flow, but with intensity in the subtle details. In chasing the purity of that decades-old dream, Frisell has arrived at something worth your time to explore, as this is an album where every element, from the first violin duet to the fading polytonal finale, feels exactly as it should.