Barclay
Ayler Records continues to release some distinctive items, and I see that I haven't had much to say about any of their releases since Joëlle Léandre's Can you hear me? (in September 2016), so although it's composed music, I want to make a few remarks about the recent album Barclay by the Scott Fields Ensemble (a quartet).... I'd actually noted Fields relatively early in this project for his unique personal style on guitar, but hadn't had much to say, largely for the same reason, namely that his releases tend to be relatively composed. In fact, I'd only mentioned him to this point around Conference of Analogies by the Eckard Vossas 4 (a Creative Sources release, also with Simon Nabatov, discussed in April 2017), saying that the "idiosyncratic sense of movement & transition does continue to remind me of Fields elsewhere." A similar comment applies to Barclay, which is actually the third in a Samuel Beckett Trilogy from Fields — with the first two (also eponymic) titles appearing in 2007 & 2009, i.e. a while ago now. Indeed, not only does Fields have a taste for Beckett, but literary inspiration in general, having e.g. composed for the Multiple Joyce Orchestra as well.... Moreover, Ayler has already supported a similar orientation in e.g. Marc Ducret's Tower Series (inspired by Vladimir Nabokov), along with the various other (mostly composed) new concepts that they've been releasing.... However, Barclay is an instrumental album, and doesn't attempt to "transcribe" the three plays on which its three tracks are based, but rather to render them into music diagrammatically, i.e. as inspired by the basic motion & feel of the texts, their characters & pacing etc.: There is thus usually a bunching (knotting), halting style, with bursts of activity often followed by repose, then more activity again, etc. (The final track is both more contrapuntal & more sustained in its activity, with a couple of basic figurations weaving together....) I certainly don't claim to be an expert on Beckett or literature per se in general (at least not from an "inside" perspective), but I do appreciate these sorts of trans-modal projects, i.e. making something out of something else, particularly across forms & genres. (After all, it's what I'm so often doing here!) There's thus a formal inspiration, both more broadly, and according to individual phrases: Fields (on electric guitar) is joined by Matthias Schubert (tenor sax), Scott Roller (cello) & Dominik Mahnig (percussion) to form colorful & appealing timbral combinations as well, such that the halting bursts are often distinctive & sparkling on their own — beyond formal considerations. (I'd also mentioned Mahnig in a piano trio with Nabatov back in February 2016, but hadn't actually mentioned Schubert previously, and Roller is new to me.) It's thus an enjoyable (& contemporary) sounding quartet, often with a "jazz" vibe (& with very clear & warm recorded sound), yet sometimes projecting more of a rock ambience around guitar.... (So let me also note that the music could hardly be more different from e.g. Feldman's organ-esque For Samuel Beckett....) It does seem to me to forge a "sound" & style, though, one that would be conducive to a more spontaneous approach. (And in my terms, that's what composition per se is for....) Todd McComb's Jazz Thoughts
Seven Deserts
Another prominent US guitarist-composer — although apparently working more in Europe these days — is Scott Fields: I'd discussed Fields in January 2019, around Barclay, a jazzy quartet "rendering" some of Samuel Beckett's words into music (& the third such Fields album): That series not only has a literary inspiration, but consequently involves a variety of angular lines & twisty forms. Something similar could be said, then, of the new Seven Deserts from Fields in an ensemble of twenty musicians (plus conductor) recorded in Cologne in November 2019. That the ensemble is much larger — & the conductor is improvising as well, including by selecting among the extensive optional materials Fields provides — is an obvious difference, and of course I've not emphasized larger ensembles in this space, but Seven Deserts is ultimately a wonderfully colorful & evocative album, and so I do also want to note it. In fact, other than the size of the ensemble, Fields' approach here parallels that of [Joe] Morris for Instantiation, specifically Switches, in that a graphical score is supplemented by traditionally notated material to be optionally inserted, and such that the "form" of the piece is improvised as well. In both cases, the album consists of multiple renderings of the same score — seven of them on Seven Deserts, making for an ample album of more than an hour — that illustrate just how differently it can sound, and at least in the case of Fields (who chose among more renderings for the album), serve to round out a compelling overall cycle. So those parallels are interesting, particularly since Morris's work is presented more within an improvised or jazz horizon, and Fields' is presented (by New World Records, and so via a very different marketing arm than Morris's DIY approach) as a classical piece. (In both cases, not only might the compositions be described as frameworks for improvising, but they could be described as generating those more specific frameworks on the spot.) And although the size of the ensemble might support such a distinction, particularly the use of a conductor, such forces & conduction are hardly unknown in the jazz world, such that this would seem to be a differentiation aimed more at audiences: And Fields' music is indeed wonderfully evocative, with a sort of rock guitar vibe really only presenting in the sixth track, amid a colorful timbral variety throughout.... The music is generally dodecaphonic (as is much of Morris's on Switches...), but sultry, spacious, wistful in turns as well. The ensemble also includes some notable players, underscoring the weight of this compositional milestone for Fields: E.g. Frank Gratkowski & Ingrid Laubrock join the reeds section, Pascal Niggenkemper & Christian Weber are on bass (in a seven member string section), David Stackenäs joins Fields on guitar — & medievalist Norbert Rodenkirchen is often prominent as one of three flutes. Sometimes the result is quite a racket, but more often a variety of radiant colors & open textures emerge as some musicians rest.... There's also something maybe a little too steady or relentless about the pulse or pace.... (Morris keeps to a rather steady pulse on Switches as well.) But the more jagged spaces of Fields' earlier compositions are generally filled here with bustling color. (Morris was thus more concerned with the nitty gritty of small figures, more often my own musical orientation — and different already from his approach on Locale, which includes more "lingering" itself — while Fields produces more of a richly colored & showy canvas. I'd expect a classical audience to enjoy it, except that they're generally too conservative to stomach anything atonal in concert — even after one hundred years.) The sense of organic landscape yields in turn a real feeling of (musical & natural) beauty — sometimes embracing human activity as well. I guess the sound of a desert then becomes something other than the sound of a desert (via a sort of contemporary surrealism, perhaps). Impressive. Todd McComb's Jazz Thoughts