Night one of this two night installation Double Bills And Buster features The Great Flood, a film by Bill Morrison with music composed and performed live by Bill Frisell with Luke Bergman and Tim Angulo.
The Great Flood is a film-music collaboration by Bill Morrison and Bill Frisell, based on and inspired by the catastrophic Mississippi River Flood of 1927 and the ensuing transformation of American society.
The Mississippi River Flood of 1927 was the most destructive river flood in American history. In the spring of 1927, the river broke out of its earthen embankments in 145 places and inundated 27,000 square miles. Part of its legacy was the forced exodus of displaced sharecroppers, who left plantation life and migrated to Northern cities adapting to an industrial society with its own set of challenges. Musically, the Great Migration fueled the evolution of acoustic blues (including artists who witnessed the flood such as Charley Patton “High Water Everywhere” and Memphis Minnie “When the Levee Breaks”) to electric blues bands that thrived in cities like Memphis, Detroit and Chicago becoming the wellspring for R&B and rock as well as developing jazz styles.
A livestream will be available free of charge at 8pm on the day of the performance and archived for future viewing.
Bill Frisell and Bill Morrison met over 30 years ago when they were both working at the Village Vanguard in the early 1990s, with Frisell on stage, and Morrison in the kitchen. Their decades-long friendship and collaboration has produced a number of films and live performances, including The Film of Her (1996), The Mesmerist (2003), The Great Flood (2013), and The Tank and The West (2021).
Frisell’s career as a guitarist and composer has spanned more than 40 years and many celebrated recordings, whose catalog has been cited by Downbeat as “the best recorded output of the decade.”
Frisell has forged a distinctive and fruitful collaboration with the Blue Note label, releasing HARMONY, Valentine, FOUR, and most recently, Orchestras to great acclaim. Frisell’s new album, In My Dreams will be released March ’26 by Blue Note Records to coincide with a series of concerts celebrating his 75th birthday throughout the U.S. and Europe. Produced by Lee Townsend, the album features Frisell’s long-time collaborators – Jenny Scheinman (violin), Eyvind Kang (viola), Hank Roberts (cello), Thomas Morgan (bass) and Rudy Royston (drums) – in an ensemble configuration that has never recorded together previously, performing largely original music written or newly arranged, especially for this project. Bill’s excitement for it is palpable. “I’ve been dreaming about this.”, he said. “A family gathering. A reunion. That’s what it feels like getting together with my closest friends. Our history goes back decades. Coming up on a half-century with Hank! I’ve spent so much time with these folks. Traveled many miles. But that doesn’t mean we’re done. There’s still much unfinished business. We’re just getting started.”
“Frisell has had a lot of practice putting high concept into a humble package. Long hailed as one of the most distinctive and original improvising guitarists of our time, he has also earned a reputation for teasing out thematic connections with his music… There’s a reason that Jazz at Lincoln Center had him program a series called Roots of Americana.” –New York Times
Recognized as one of America’s 21 most vital and productive performing artists, Frisell was named an inaugural Doris Duke Artist in 2012. He is also a recipient of grants from United States Artists, Meet the Composer among others. In 2016, he was a beneficiary of the first FreshGrass Composition commission to preserve and support innovative grassroots music. Upon San Francisco Jazz opening their doors in 2013, he served as one of their Resident Artistic Directors. Bill is the subject of a documentary film by director Emma Franz, entitled Bill Frisell: A Portrait, which examines his creative process in depth, as well as an extensive biography by Philip Watson, Beautiful Dreamer: The Guitarist Who Changed The Sound of American Music.
Bill Morrison has been called “the poet laureate of lost films” (New York Times, 9/21/2021). He is best known for two cult classics: Decasia (2002), the first film of the 21st century to be named to the Library of Congress’ National Film Registry, and Dawson City: Frozen Time (2016) which has often been listed as one of the best films of its decade (2010s). Incident (2023) won the International Documentary Association Award, Cinema Eye Honors in 2025, and was nominated for an Academy Award for in 2025. As a theatrical projection designer, Morrison has continuously designed film and video to accompany large scale theatrical and music performance for over 30 different productions since 1990. For over 35 years he has consistently worked with some of the greatest composers and musical performers of our time. Recent projection design credits include “Antony and Cleopatra” by John Adams at the Met Opera in 2025.
