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Bill Frisell and John Scofield

BY BILL KISLIUK

Guitarists Bill Frisell and John Scofield are two jazz guitarists who are at the top of their game right now. Scofield has reached a popular pinnacle in the last few years by just kicking back and getting in a groove. Frisell, on the other hand, has grown in stature because of his masterful way of reconstituting familiar music and disfiguring it lovingly and insightfully, the way Picasso rearranged the features of the women who posed for him.

Despite these different tacks, the two have a lot more in common than their current pre-eminence in the vanguard of jazz guitar. They’ve recorded together (with Marc Johnson’s Bass Desires), both solo with a metallic jazz-rock sound, both attended Berklee College of Music in the 1970s, and both dropped new discs last month. Frisell’s Blues Dream (Nonesuch) is the latest installment in his exploration of American roots. In 1993 he interpreted tunes by American pop-music figures including John Philip Sousa, Madonna, Dylan, Sonny Rollins, Aaron Copland, and Muddy Waters on Have a Little Faith (Nonesuch). Then in 1997 he pitched into country music on Nashville (Nonesuch), an album he recorded with Lyle Lovett and Jerry Douglas. In 1999, he visited planet Bacharach on The Sweetest Punch: Songs of Elvis Costello and Burt Bacharach (Decca), a recasting of the Costello/Bacharach collaboration Painted from Memory (Mercury). And last year he released a mix of country songs and originals called Ghost Town (Nonesuch).

On Blues Dream, Frisell’s spacy, shimmering sound is not put to the task of morphing the music of any other composer. Not exactly, anyway. Strains of traditional gospel and blues and especially country music appear like apparitions, as though he were floating in a cloud over the Blue Ridge Mountains or the Mississippi Delta. On “The Tractor,” he picks up a banjo and plays what appears to be a straight-ahead bluegrass instrumental, until trumpeter Ron Miles, trombonist Curtis Fowlkes, and alto-saxophonist Billy Drewes lurch in with a woozy set of lines that could have been lifted, drunkenly, from an old Herb Alpert Tijuana Brass LP. Frisell has worked with these horn players on and off; the new voice here is Greg Leisz, a steel-guitar player who has worked with Emmylou Harris, Beck, and Dave Alvin and whose atmospherics blend perfectly with Frisell’s playing.

On “Ron Carter,” a track named for the eminent jazz bassist who is another one of Frisell’s astonishing list of collaborators, the guitarist does something that long-time fans are fairly starved for these days: he follows bass player David Piltch’s pulse and cranks up a steely funk guitar jam, bouncing off Leisz and layers of his own effects while drummer Kenny Wolleson knocks about with forceful accents. Frisell’s magic lies in the way he melds traditional influences while using his instrument in every conceivable way, creating elegant, earthy music — like the swaying dirge “What Do We Do?” — that is called jazz only because there’s no better word to describe instrumental music of such depth and soul.

Meanwhile, Scofield is boldly going where many have gone before, but usually not so well or in such good company. Works for Me (Verve) is a straight-ahead postbop session with some of the best burners in the business: alto-sax volcano Kenny Garrett, drummer Billy Higgins, pianist Brad Mehldau, and bassist Christian McBride. Although Scofield’s most significant early gig was in the electric Miles Davis ensembles of the early 1980s, this disc more closely resembles even earlier Davis groups and other small-jazz combos, where the head was an organized affair and every soloist passed the baton to the next guy in a civilized way. Not that Scofield has been working the outside angles lately. He’s gone right for the corner pocket, first joining Medeski Martin & Wood on the ripping funk disc A Go Go (Verve, 1998), which opened the ears of younger listeners to his sound, and then returning last year with another finger-snapping effort, Bump (Verve).

Works for Me is something else again. Scofield plays the traditional role of a trumpeter in a two-horn set-up, going stride for stride with Garrett on the melody to the sublime opener, “I’ll Catch You,” and on several other cuts. His rock edge surfaces only here and there, as a quick jab or catlike yowl on the insistent “Loose Canon,” or when he scrapes along with Higgins on the closing “Freepie.” Several cuts have a relaxed, light feel that owes largely to Scofield’s hummable melodies, which sometimes show a trace of Miles (“Six and Eight”) or Ornette Coleman (“Hive).” Even so, Works for Me works so well largely because of the awesome collection of players. Higgins and McBride guide not only the tempo but the dynamics, with Higgins signaling shifts with a single shot or rush of brushwork. Mehldau’s gentle, intricate excursions balance delicacy and bop thrust, and Garrett is both lyrical and adventurous, further cementing his reputation as a modern-day titan on his storied instrument.

John Scofield performs this Wednesday through Saturday, March 7 through 10, at the Regattabar. Call 876-7777.