It’s already been said of David Friesen that he does "for the art of bass playing what Pythagoras did for the triangle" [JazzMagazine, USA].

His credits make up a long list, and his collaborations with prominent colleagues in the music business are just as many. In the course of his long career David Friesen has worked with or for artists like Airto Moreira, Mal Waldron, Jeff Johnson, Valdinho Langer, Denny Zeitlin, Nils Winther, Duke Jordan, John Nilsen, Steve Kindler, Paul Horn, Steven Halpern, Bob Stark, Flora Purim, Isaac Epps, Kenneth Nash, Joe Henderson, Fred Hamilton, Dexter Gordon, Mose Allison and many others.

Born in 1942 in Tacoma, Washington, Friesen began to learn the musician’s trade at the age of 9, starting out on the accordion and – incredible as it sounds – the ukulele. His professional involvement with the guitar started at age 16, and the first highpoint in his guitar-playing career came a short while later when Friesen made his first public appearance as guitarist with Slim Gaillard’s Jazzformation in a Los Angeles club (although he was still technically "under age"). At 19, while he was stationed in Paris in the U.S. Army, he worked with Johnny Griffin and Art Taylor among others; in 1961, once his unit had relocated to Copenhagen, the artists he met included Dick Berk and Ted Curson. David Friesen’s involvement with the bass dates back to 1964 after his return to the United States; he practised up to ten hours every day on the new instrument in his then home town of Seattle and jammed with a multitude of like-minded musicians, some of whom went on to write jazz history, such as Larry Coryell and Randy Brecker. At now legendary locations like the “Penthouse” he met giants like Miles Davis, John Coltrane and Bill Evans, who “sometimes even let me play along”– as he relates today with a smile. Since these illustrious beginnings David Friesen has long since made a name for himself, too, as a bass player as gifted as he is innovative; his discography now numbers about 30 solo and collaborative albums (whose stylistic spectrum ranges from pure undiluted jazz to meditative music).