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NW 80821CD
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"Wrestling with the notion of balancing both formal construction and creative spontaneity has allowed Scott Fields (b. 1952) to compose a powerful body of work with ties to extramusical concerns from the realms of literature, philosophy, and science. Seven Deserts (2019), rather than operating from a fixed narrative structure with predetermined events, lays out the ground rules for a manifestation that is absolutely identical in every performance in its operations and sonic vocabulary, but with each realization completely unique in internal detail and musical interaction. Improvisation fleshes out the structure yet also embeds itself in the musical foundation to help determine the overall shape. The conductor is improvising to the same extent that the individual players are and may set forces in motion, allow them to work, and then, based on the results, initiate the next iteration. In Seven Deserts, Fields has created a work that has a sense of loss and unnamable dread coexisting with an objectivist appreciation of aesthetic beauty and balance. He shifts the focus between foreground and background, hyperactivity versus the static, saturated sound and quietude. By recording Seven Deserts in the performance hall in Cologne, both with and without an audience, Fields was able to have the best of both worlds. Listening through the set, one hears deserts in full bloom: vivacious, juicy, and ripe with the players' interactions, virtuosic solo outings, and varied sonic environments. There are elegiac clouds that suddenly are scattered with Euro-jazz disruptions. Baroque-sounding flute harmonies splinter into jazzy riffs that never settle into unisons but spiral outward. A tense groove reminiscent of Miles Davis's On the Corner period shatters into shards of noise and floating tones. We hear roiling saxophones and vibraphone kicked over the edge by electric guitar punctuations and roaring tenor sax expletives. The final movement reveals an impression of Debussy as orchestrated by Webern, which opens into fractured solo guitar vs the ensemble and then resolving into strange attractors -- pools of repeated activities without repetition and a sudden end. Fields has chosen his players wisely, an orchestra of virtuosic soloists, including members of Ensemble Musikfabrik and other new music groups from Cologne, as well as freelancers drawn both from the region and other corners of the world."
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NEOS 40806CD
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2008 release. Driving back to Chicago for Christmas a decade or so ago, maybe less, David Sedaris, reading his story about taking French class in France, brought me to tears. Listening to David Sedaris read one of his stories is always better than reading one of his stories and if you do read one of his stories it's best to imagine his voice reading the story. This particular story, in which Sedaris and his classmates in broken French and their teacher in pissed-off French compare assorted ludicrous holiday fables, was the final segment in that week's This American Life, the radio program from Chicago's WBEZ. The music on this recording is fresh even though for two years and running now the shows themselves have been scraps that the carpetbagger Ira Glass, who now expends his real energy striving for TV stardom, cobbles together from previously aired programs. In a transparent attempt to present old as new, each week he now provides new narration and music to bind scavenged segments. That's where this recording comes in. Each of the five pieces is written for a This American Life theme. Performed by Scott Fields (electric guitar), Sebastian Gramss (contrabass), João Lobo (percussion), Scott Roller (cello). Scott Fields plays a custom CP Thornton Jazz Elite guitar. Recorded 20/ 21 January 2008, mixed 12 February 2008, at Topaz Studios, Cologne, Germany.
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NW 80695CD
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"Scott Fields's (b. 1955) Samuel, the second album of compositions based on Beckett's plays, follows 2007's highly acclaimed Beckett. One could argue though that Fields's compositions are in fact closer to the original texts than most other Beckett-inspired musical works, for the simple reason that the Chicago-born guitarist and composer actually derives his music directly from them, not only by assigning precise pitches, chords, time values and rhythms to particular words and phrases in the text and transforming Beckett's wordplay into clearly delineated melodic lines and harmonic fields, but also by associating his meticulous stage and lighting directions with particular sounds and gestures. It's no coincidence that Scott Fields has so far chosen to work with Beckett's plays, rather than his prose or poetry, since a sense of character and identity -- or loss thereof -- is as central to his music as it is to Beckett's dramaturgy."
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