Bill Frisell Trio featuring Luke Bergman & Tim Angulo

In mid-March 2026, just before Big Ears began, Bill Frisell was celebrating his 75th birthday by doing exactly what has made him one of the most celebrated guitarists of the last half-century: playing. He had a theater gig in his hometown of Denver, built a band of all-star friends for San Francisco, did two nights at New York’s Lincoln Center with two distinct lineups. It was telling that, for almost all of those shows, Frisell was joined by bassist Luke Bergman and drummer Tim Angulo, a rhythm section several decades younger than him and with whom he has yet to release recordings. “I’m not sure if I feel 75,” Frisell said. “I really feel like I haven’t even started yet.” From his auspicious beginnings on ECM in the late ’70s to a four-decade collaboration with John Zorn starting in the late ’80s, from his tender but unsettled records for Nonesuch and Blue Note to his collaborations with Earth or Mary Halvorson or Julian Lage, Frisell is one of music’s most identifiable guitarists but unpredictable players, age be damned.

Frisell’s trio with Bergman and Angulo is relatively new, but they play with the sort of attentive listening and flexible repertoire that suggests a kind of predestination. Bergman is a mainstay of the Seattle music scene. A former University of Washington student and artist-in-residence, he has long worked with trumpeter Cuong Vu and as a music community organizer. Bergman played on Frisell’s 2019 album, Harmony. Raised in Berkeley, Angulo was a fellow at the Brubeck Institute who attended The New School and studied with Tyshawn Sorey and Vijay Iyer. Bergman keeps his bass tone high, so that his thoughtful notes ride just beneath Frisell’s lead, while Angulo is a fluid drummer, able to find pockets between boom-bap and bebop and then shift into atmospheric drifts. With a wide songbook that starts with Frisell originals but includes Dylan, The Delfonics, and American standards, this trio is one of Frisell’s most intuitive ever.