A short film by
Star Rosencrans
and Joshua Hill
Music by Bill Frisell
Recorded in the TANK on April 28, 2019
For the Winter Solstice, this song of hope
played by Bill Frisell
in a film of moments
from Rangely, Colorado.
Wishing you the peace and joy of the season.
At his 2019 residency at the TANK, guitarist and composer Bill Frisell spent two days filling the structure with music, and at the end moved us all by playing this song.
For their own TANK Residency in September of this year, filmmaker Star Rosecrans and violinist/composer Joshua Hill shot footage of the TANK and the surrounding area, which they then edited into this film, using Frisell’s “We Shall Overcome” as their soundtrack.
We liked the result so much we decided to send it out to as a Solstice gift to our online audience.
May it give you hope for the coming year.
The guitarist, composer and arranger Bill Frisell was born in Baltimore in 1951 and grew up in Denver. Frisell’s career has spanned more than 40 years and dozens of celebrated recordings. His eclectic output as a bandleader has emphasized folk, country music, and Americana. In the early 1990s Frisell made one of his best reviewed albums: Have a Little Faith, an ambitious survey of American music, from Charles Ives and Aaron Copland (the entirety of Billy the Kid) to John Hiatt (the title song), Bob Dylan (“Just Like a Woman”) and Madonna (“Live to Tell”). He has been nominated for the GRAMMYs numerous times and in 2014 his album Unspeakable won for best contemporary jazz album. He recently appeared on Gregoire Maret and Romain Collin’s album Americana, which was nominated as Best Contemporary Instrumental Album for the 2021 GRAMMY Awards. A recent documentary film by director Emma Franz, entitled Bill Frisell: A Portrait, examines his creative process in depth. You can hear another version of “We Shall Overcome” on his most recent trio album Valentine with Thomas Morgan on bass and Rudy Royston (also from Denver) on the Blue Note label. Bill will return to the TANK to record and perform in 2021.
Joshua Hill is a Los Angeles-based composer, songwriter, and violinist. In 2018, he received a Canadian Screen Award for co-writing the song “The Crown Sleeps” for the Academy Award nominated film The Breadwinner. He graduated summa cum laude from Arizona State University with a degree in Music Theory and Composition. Since then he has worked as a freelance composer, performer, recording engineer, educator, and most recently has devoted his focus to film scoring. He frequently collaborates with guitarist and composer Michael Krassner (Boxhead Ensemble) on film scores. Their most recent collaboration, The Evening Hour, premiered at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival. Joshua is on the TANK’s Board of Directors.
Star Rosencrans is a film editor and documentary filmmaker. Feather and Pine, his debut feature documentary, co-directed and produced with Michael Beck, opened at the Tulsa American Film Festival in 2019 and will appear in February at the Big Sky Documentary Film Festival; the film also won the jury prize for Best Feature Documentary at the Mammoth Lakes Film Festival. Star was the cinematographer on the 2014 award-winning documentary The Last Season and on 2015’s Sundance premiere Western. He has edited for programs on CNN/HLN, A&E, MTV, and The Discovery Channel. A documentary feature he edited for Religion of Sports, Through the Darkness, premiered at the Big Sky Documentary Film Festival in 2018.
Bill Frisell’s Management
Songtone LLC – Phyllis Oyama, Lee Townsend
Funding for Bill Frisell at the Tank provided by
The National Endowment for the ArtsThe Neil D. Karbank FoundationThe Willam H. Donner Foundation
The TANK Center for Sonic Arts
Staff
James Paul, Executive Director
Samantha Wade, Resident Audio Engineer
Michael Van Wagoner, Technical Engineer
Julie Noyes, Tank Mind Counselor
Board of Directors
Bruce Odland, President
Sue Samaniego, Vice President
Lisa Hatch, Treasurer
Jeremiah Moore, Secretary
Bill Ballou
Foster Brashear
Sandy Brown
Joshua Hill
Kim Keith
Steve Lewis
Susan Schwartz
Tom Wasinger
Heather Zadra
Lois LaFond, Emerita