Rudy Royston's drumming is no less mysterious. Few people have played the instrument with a musicality so complete that he could solo with brushes on a slow ballad, and have at least as much of substance and relevance to say as Frisell or that master of understatement, bassist Thomas Morgan.
Many others, from Pharoah Sanders all the way to Arvo Part, have made mysterious music, but few, aside from the late trumpeter Lester Bowie, combined that quality with such goofy playfulness. There were times during this concert when it was like watching three children utterly absorbed in the same sandpit.
This is among the great jazz bands in its combination of personalities, sounds, ideas and interaction. They second-guess and surprise each other in equal measure, while often playing with candlelit intimacy, as if we're eavesdropping on conversations that are no less private for being musical.
There's astonishing detail in the crafting of sounds and precision in the blending of them. Whereas last time they were here, in 2019, they played songs from the screen-music-oriented When You Wish upon a Star (which tended to be rowdier and larger than life), here, concentrating on material from the Valentine album, they were closer to the art of the miniaturist, and the exceptional sound mixing allowed you to catch the infinite subtleties emanating from all three instruments.
They opened with flurries of arrhythmic notes, that, like random filings suddenly being attracted to a magnet, solidified into a blues: Frisell's Thelonious Monk-influenced title track from Valentine. His playing was typically idiosyncratic in its sweet and sour harmonies, while Royston had the drums and cymbals singing, and Morgan growled and prowled around the lurching, swinging groove with the minimum of notes.
The compositions segued into one another, whether blurring where one stopped and another started, or with bold leaps of contrast. The commonality was seemingly infinite options, from the gentleness and naivety of a nursery rhyme, to howling guitar against a jolting backbeat. Always the music was in flux - ranging all the way to Johnny Mercer's I'm an Old Cowhand (from the Rio Grande), which they played with contagious fun. But, as with Burt Bacharach's What the World Needs Now Is Love, there was no hint of satire; rather a celebration of these songs' innate beauty, which somehow came into sharper focus without the distraction of lyrics.