Saturday, November 2, Cologne
1 p.m. Lunch Concert
Sankt Peter Köln
Jabachstraße 1
50676 Cologne
Free admission
Scott Fields — Drowning in Flame, a quarter-tone suite in six movements, for steel-string guitar (Westerngitarre, Stahlsaitengitarre) (2015)
A successful crowdfunding campaign requires a willingness to solicit friends, family, fans, acquaintances, and really just about anyone else. I just don’t have that in me. I’ve pulled the plug on the campaign to record my settings of Steve Dalachinsky poems. Go Fund Me has returned the contributions. Perhaps another source of funding will appear.
After polling the public about whether this was a good idea and receiving enthusiastic support, I've decided to raise money to record and release the project Steve and I started three years ago.
Financially there's nothing in it for me. The opposite in fact. But certainly there would be some artistic satisfaction and a feeling of the fulfillment of a promise.
Please share if you can.
The group has congealed for the November 28 repremier in Bonn and November 29 performance and recording in Cologne of my most recent Modular Composition, “Mojave Desert.” The musicians are:
➤violin…Axel Lindner
➤violin…Hannah Weirich
➤viola…Annegret Mayer-Lindenberg
➤viola…Axel Porath
➤cello…Niklas Seidl
➤contrabass…Pascal Niggenkemper
➤contrabass…Christian Weber
➤electric guitar…Scott Fields
➤electric guitar…David Stackenäs
➤flute…Daniel Agi
➤flute…Helen Bledsloe
➤flute…Norbert Rodenkirchen
➤clarinets…Frank Gratkowski
➤soprano saxophone…Ingrid Laubrock
➤tenor saxophone…Matthias Schubert
➤trumpet…Udo Moll
➤trombone…Matthias Muche
➤tuba…Melvyn Poore
➤percussion…Ramon Gardella
➤percussion…Arturo Portugal
➤conductor…Stephen Dembski
https://touchingextremes.wordpress.com/2019/04/15/scott-fields-ensemble-barclay/
In January virtuoso lutenist Stephen Rath will record the suite he commissioned from me last year, the seven-movement “Wrath,” plus a second suite that I am in the process of writing. Both are for theorbo, a type of baroque bass lute.
New on the site: Bonus Tracks. We’re starting with what was intended to be CD2 of what ended up being a one-CD set from my 2001 large ensemble recording of “OZZO” plus all of the tracks from my debute as a leader on CD, 1993’s LRuuning with Scissors.”
Word reached me this morning that Joseph Jarman has died. I knew Joseph just a little, but for a long time. My teenagers rock band rehearsed in the basement of our drummer’s parents’ enormous house in the Hyde Park neighborhood on Chicago’s south side. Because the drummer’s mother was Joseph’s close friend, he was often just hanging around upstairs. He would listen and make supportive comments. Although I never had the nerve to ask to play with him back then, I did listen to ad hoc sessions he had at the house. A couple of years later, when I was part of an incredibly loud free jazz trio that was heavily influenced by the AACM events I attended in the neighborhood, he came to a couple of concerts and said kind things and didn’t mention the issue of my attempted appropriation of the AACM approach. That wasn’t universal. After one of these concerts Pete Cosey was so mad that he headed up the center aisle, yelling and shaking his fist at me. His friends intercepted him.
When I was in my early 20s, I moved to Madison, Wisconsin (coincidently at about the same time as Joseph’s bandmate Roscoe Mitchell, whom I didn’t know at the time). I stopped performing entirely and went months without touching my instruments. Fifteen years later, having confirmed that although life as a musician is tough, everything else is worse, I started taking lessons and playing occasional gigs. That’s when I called Joseph to ask if he would perform as part of a quintet that I would assemble.
Joseph pretended to remember me. He came to Madison, where we rehearsed for two days and then performed his compositions in Edgewood College’s beautiful chapel. That’s the photo below (by Joseph Blough).
Not much longer later, I asked Joseph to play in an octet for what turned out to be my first CD released on a label other than my own. It was also my first modular composition, “48 Motives.” He suggested that during his visit that he and Marilyn Crispell, who was the group’s pianist, for no extra fee, play a fundraising concert for the project. My trio with two other members of the octet, Matt Turner and Vincent Davis, opened. I hired a pair of engineers to record Joseph and Marilyn’s set, which I later produced as the CD “Connecting Spirits,” for the Music and Arts label. Shortly before my trio went on stage, Joseph asked what material we were going to play. I said some of the Motives from the octet. Marilyn and Joseph looked at each other and she said, on no, we’d better play something else. If I’d kept my mouth shut, Connecting Spirits would have included a collection of my little motives.
Perhaps two years later Joseph played on my second modular composition, 96 Gestures, which was released as a triple CD on CRI. This project, a 12-member ensemble, included a premier at the Frank Lloyd Wright designed Unitarian Meeting House where we had recorded Connecting Spirits. The approach of Joseph throughout the project was collective and subtle. But when I saw him see Roscoe in the audience, he played as beautiful and powerful a solo as I’ve ever heard from anyone. I wish Roscoe had been in the booth during the recordings.
Although we spoke on the phone a few times later, the last time I saw Joseph was when I attended several recording sessions for the Art Ensemble’s PI Records release “The Meeting.” Lester Bowie had died and Joseph had returned to the fold, although, as it turned out, briefly. There was clearly tension among the members and Joseph and Roscoe were vaudevillian in their complements of each other’s playing. CRI had recently closed and their catalog passed to New World Records. I had acquired the remaining copies of the CRI pressing. Joseph gave me the complement of asking for CD sets so that he could give them to students at his Dojo in Brooklyn. He said that my concept of compositions that had no fixed form and could be constructed in infinite combinations fit his Buddhist teachings. At the premier of 96 Gestures a few years earlier, after the first half I said to the audience “We will be back in 20 minutes to finish this piece.” Joseph said to me “How can this piece ever finish?”
Joseph could be difficult, but he was never difficult with me. When I was a teenager he was nothing but supportive. And as an adult the only time he showed impatience was when he saw that other ensemble members were trying to take advantage of me. One of my fondest memories is after the first take of 96 Gestures, a session during which Joseph rarely spoke, the youngest and least experienced member of the group decided to explain to the rest of us exactly how he thought the piece and recording should go and how the conductor should react to hand-signal suggestions from the musicians. When the young guy finished, Joseph looked at me and said “I would be more interested to hear what the composer thinks.” That may not seem like much, but it meant a lot to me.
Barclay, the third and final installment of my Beckett music, is now out on Ayler Records. http://www.ayler.com/scott-fields-ensemble-barclay.html
With Matthias Schubert, saxophone, and Scott Roller, cello, returning and Dominik Mahnig taking over on percussion.
My most recent modular composition for large ensemble, “The Assassination of a Mojave Desert Phone Booth,” has been granted support for performances, recording, and CD production. Infinite thanks to Kunststiftung NRW for the vote of confidence.
The performances and recording will be in spring 2019.
Today at Topaz Studios we mastered “Barclay,” the third and final Scott Fields Ensemble CD of instrumental versions of Samuel Beckett plays. It’s off to Ayler Records for release in December.
Tuesday and Wednesday we recorded the final of my three Beckett CDs, Samuel Barclay Beckett, at Topaz Studios. Dominik Mahnig stepped in at the last second to replace our decapacitated percussionist. Thanks Dominik.
Editing Tuesday. Mixing Friday. Mastering Saturday Then it’s off to Ayler Records for release.
From Massimo Ricci at Touching Extremes.
https://touchingextremes.wordpress.com/2018/06/13/scott-fields-burning-in-water-drowning-in-flames/
Last night I finished the final composition for my third and final CD of instrumental settings of Samuel Beckett plays. When I started the project this book was brand new.
The CD, "Barclay," will be released by Clean Feed Records in September. Live premier in Bonn later in fall, with performances in Münster and Dortmund to follow.
This project is supported by Musikfonds.
Acoustic Solo, playing selections from the New Atlantis Records CD "burning in water, drowning in flame, plus other pieces.
Opening solo guitar sets from Dan Hintz and Jim Warchol.
Scott Fields solo acoustic guitar, playing selections from the New Atlantis Records CD “Burning in Water, Drowning in Flame,” plus in duo with Special Guest Elliott Sharp.
Downtown Music Gallery
13 Monroe Street
New York, NY 10002-7351
(212) 473-0043
dmg@downtownmusicgallery.com
www.downtownmusicgallery.com
Arrrg! News! Just booked a flight on WOW airlines and an hour too late discovered that checking (CHECKING!) my guitar will cost another $180 ($90 per leg; I connect in Iceland).
