New York Guitar Festival: Bill Frisell and Skúli Sverrisson (with Mary Halvorson and Tomas Fujiwara)
Link to Derek Gripper and Rahim AlHaj at Kaufman Music Center - June 26

**BOX OFFICE WILL CLOSE AT 5 PM – TICKETS CAN BE PURCHASED AT THE VENUE AS OF 7 PM**
June 13, 2025 – Friday, 8 PM | Doors 7 PM
8 PM – Mary Halvorson and Tomas Fujiwara | 9 PM – Bill Frisell and Skúli Sverrisson
First Unitarian Congregation – 119-121 Pierrepont Street, Brooklyn Heights
Advance: $45 | Day of Show: $50 | Children 14 and under: $5 – must be accompanied by an adult and tickets must be purchased at the door.
WMI Members: Advance: $36 | Day of Show: $40
Co-presented with NY Guitar Festival – Hosted by John Schaefer (New Sounds)
Bill Frisell has been a regular guest of the NYGF, and as with all of his past appearances, he is bringing a new duo partner. This time, it’s the Icelandic composer and bass guitarist Skúli Sverrisson, whose discography includes work with Laurie Anderson, Lou Reed, Wadada Leo Smith, and over a hundred others. Frisell, meanwhile, has a discography best described as epic. It includes work with Elvis Costello, jazz legend Elvin Jones, and British composer Gavin Bryars. He has routinely ignored genre categories, working across rock, jazz, country, experimental, classical, and West African music. Guitar fans can be a contentious, opinionated lot – but there is unanimous agreement on Frisell’s place in the pantheon. – John Schaefer

Mary Halvorson & Tomas Fujiwara Duo
Tomas Fujiwara (drums), Mary Halvorson (guitar)
Drummer Tomas Fujiwara and guitarist Mary Halvorson have been collaborating for eighteen years. They met in New York City in the early 2000’s, and first started playing together in cornetist Taylor Ho Bynum’s sextet. Since then they have become each other’s most frequent collaborators, working together in a myriad of projects led by Michael Formanek, Adam O’Farrill, Matana Roberts, Tomeka Reid, Ben Goldberg and Mike Reed. Fujiwara is also a part of Halvorson’s Code Girl and Amaryllis, and Halvorson is a member of Fujiwara’s bands Triple Double and The Hook Up. This rare duo performance showcases a project built on years of history and collaboration in a stripped down setting.

About John Schaefer – Executive Producer, Music Programming, WNYC Radio
John Schaefer is the host and producer of WNYC’s long-running new music show New Sounds (“The #1 radio show for the Global Village” – Billboard), founded in 1982, and its innovative Soundcheck podcast, which has featured live performances and interviews with a variety of guests since 2002. He created the New Sounds Live concert series in 1986, which features new works, commissioned pieces, and a special series devoted to live music for silent films.
About New York Guitar Festival
Exploring virtually every aspect of the guitar’s personality, the New York Guitar Festival, since 1999, has presented many of the world’s most influential guitarists at Carnegie Hall, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, National Sawdust, (Le) Poisson Rouge, 92nd Street Y, Brookfield Place Winter Garden and other iconic venues, large and small. From multi Grammy-winners to emerging artists, NYGF performers have included masters of the classical repertoire (Pepe Romero, Christopher Parkening, Ana Vidović, Nigel North) as well as blues & jazz (Taj Mahal, Bucky Pizzarelli, Bill Frisell, Sonny Landreth), pop & indie rock (Vernon Reid, Bruce Springsteen, Bon Iver, Andy Summers, Thurston Moore), and folk & Americana (Levon Helm, Emmylou Harris, Cindy Cashdollar, Leo Kottke) as well as sounds of Central & South America (Badi Assad, Yamandu Costa, Vinicius Cantuária) and genre-defying innovators (Kaki King, David Torn, Daniel Lanois, Bryce Dessner). The New York Guitar Festival: music from across the centuries. . . and music yet to be.
The New York Guitar Festival is made possible by the generosity of a grant from the Augustine Foundation.