Two exceptional American guitarists visit Japan next month. Although at opposite ends of the spectrum in style, background and geography, both operate firmly outside the mainstream, share a desire to innovate and produce music that can be at once both meditative and challenging.

Bill Frisell from Baltimore has long been highly regarded for his original and instantly recognizable guitar sound. Generally known as a jazz guitarist, he is equally influenced by rock, blues and country, which he combines, with more, into a genre-defying music. While there are traces of Jim Hall and Wes Montgomery, Robert Fripp and Jim Hendrix are as much in evidence, and he uses electronics to produce long sustained notes with lots of vibrato and legato, possibly a legacy of his early days as a clarinet player.

Frisell has worked as a sideman for many musicians, including John Zorn, Wayne Horwitz, David Sanborn, Elvis Costello and former ECM stablemates Paul Motian, Paul Bley and Jan Garbarek. Illustrious drummer Jim Keltner joined Frisell on his album released last year in Japan, "Good Dog, Happy Man," as did Ry Cooder on one track.

As a solo performer or leading his band, he may not have achieved the commercial success of such contemporaries as Pat Metheny or John Scofield, but he is certainly eclectic and stylistically almost schizophrenic.

His new album and his first recorded entirely alone, "Ghost Town" is one of his best. Frisell plays not just electric and acoustic guitars but also banjo and bass. He tackles, in his own introspective style, such well-known tunes as Hank William's "I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry" and "When I Fall in Love." Elsewhere he reworks some of his own songs, including "Tales from the Farside," the music he composed for the animated version of Gary Larson's cartoon strip.

Frisell deserves more recognition as a composer. He will be leading a trio (bass and drums in addition to his guitar) and playing a variety of material on one evening as part of the 16th Tokyo Summer Festival, but two days earlier they will be performing Frisell's own compositions to accompany silent movies. These include the Buster Keaton film "One Week," one of a trio of Keaton movies to which Frisell scored music on a 1994 recording.

He has also specifically composed scores for two other silent films to be shown, the Japanese "Bakudan Hanayome" from 1935, and the very short (seven minutes) but reportedly extremely funny 1910 French film "Le Neo Impressioniste." Both shows should be fascinating.

Bill Frisell, 7 p.m. July 19 at Music & Film at Art Sphere, Tennozu Isle, as part of the Tokyo Summer Festival. Tickets 6,000 yen, 5,000 yen and 3,500 yen. For tickets and information call Tokyo Summer Festival, (03) 3400-5999, or Art Sphere Ticket Center (03) 5460-9999.

At Akasaka ACT Theater at 7 p.m. July 21. Tickets 6,500 yen from Kyodo Tokyo (03) 3498-9999, Ticket Pia (03) 5237-9999, Lawson Ticket (03) 5537-9999 and CN Playguide (03) 5802-9999. For information call Kyodo Tokyo.

When TLG opened in April, I mentioned it was a shame the agent had chosen to bring back the duo Hapa, instead of presenting more authentic Hawaiian slack-key guitar. Well, perhaps someone took note, because in July, Cyril Pahinui will be performing. Pahinui is one of the top current Hawaiian slack-key players. His training could hardly have been better: The son of the late, great Gabby Pahinui, he grew up listening to and participating in the jam sessions his father held at his house with other now legendary musicians, including Atta Isaacs, Sonny Chillingworth and many more.

Slack-key, or ki ho alu, is the one of the world's great acoustic guitar traditions, created by the Hawaiians who literally slackened the strings of the guitars brought to the islands by the Spanish and Mexican cowboys in the 1830s.

Gabby Pahinui was the most influential slack-key guitarist ever, the father of the modern style, and Cyril Pahinui played on many of his father's classic records in the 1970s. One of these sessions included Ry Cooder, whose guitar style owes much to the music of Gabby Pahinui. The album "Gabby Pahinui Hawaiian Band" is every bit as good as the Buena Vista Social Club, even though it didn't achieve anywhere near the same degree of success. I'm sure Cooder would be the first to agree that the music of Gabby Pahinui lives on through the Buena Vista Social Club, since he is essentially playing Hawaiian style on the album.

Cyril Pahinui was one of the original members of the Sunday Manoa, founded by another Gabby follower, Peter Moon, before joining the Peter Moon Band, and helping to spawn what became the "renaissance" of Hawaiian music at the end of the '60s.

He got together with his brothers Bla and Martin to make the 1992 album "The Pahinui Brothers," with drummer Jim Keltner and, once again, Ry Cooder, before recording as a solo artist.

Pahinui is constantly experimenting with new tunings and tempos, and brings syncopated African and Latin rhythms to slack-key through the music's characteristic thumb-stroke bass. At any rate, his music makes perfect summer sense.