Double Bill and Buster: A Night of Film and Music by Bill Frisell, Bill Morrison and Buster Keaton with 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, and 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.

For this performance, he, Bergman, and Angulo play Frisell scores to two sets of silent films—first, footage compiled by his longtime friend and collaborator Bill Morrison and, then, two movies directed by and starring early film legend Buster Keaton. Morrison and Frisell met in the early ’90s, when Morrison was working in the kitchen of the Village Vanguard. He has since become a lauded director who specializes in turning archival finds into poignant stories of some overlooked place or time. The Great Flood, his 2013 collaboration with Frisell, was an affecting portrait of the Mississippi River’s 1927 devastation, when the great river broke its banks. Here, Frisell’s trio enlivens the footage with music that moves between gestural sound effects and ruminative themes, adding dimension to the works of Morrison and Keaton.