New World Records: 80695-2
http://www.newworldrecords.org/album.cgi?rm=view&album_id=82787
* Scott Fields : electric guitar
* Matthias Schubert : tenor saxophone
* Scott Roller : cello
* John Hollenbeck : percussion
http://www.scottfields.com/
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthias_Schubert
http://www.scottroller.de/
http://www.johnhollenbeck.com/
Recorded by Reinhard Kobialka at Topaz Studio on January 23 and 24, 2009.
Samuel Beckett
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Beckett
http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Beckett
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Beckett
http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Beckett
Reviews
By Bill Shoemaker
http://www.pointofdeparture.org/PoD24/PoD24MoreMoments3.html
Scott Fields’ music prompts questions, usually quickly: Where’s the line
between the bold conceptions and the meticulous execution? Between the composer
and the improviser? Between the jazz and what’s beyond category? Much to the
guitarist’s credit, the answers are almost always elusive, as is the case with
Samuel, Fields’ second collection of compositions drawn from the texts of
Samuel Beckett. Given that, as measured in discographical time, the album comes
on the heels of Beckett – the 2006 Clean Feed collection also featuring Fields’
quartet with tenor saxophonist Matthias Schubert, cellist Scott Roller and
percussionist John Hollenbeck – spinning this more innocuously titled album
without making the connection is not surprising. The music is sufficiently
compelling to initially keep the booklet with Dan Warburton’s informative notes
off to the side. The quartet has an incisive bead on the material; their
ensembles are bristling; and their ability to sustain the finely calibrated
development of the materials in three contrasting pieces of 20 to 25 minutes in
duration reflects an exemplary, collectively honed discipline. Sure, knowing
Fields painstakingly ascribed pitch and duration values to Beckett’s texts
facilitates a fuller reception of the work; yet, it is not required to dig the
jagged and jangling materials. It certainly explains the ensemble’s aversion to
lustrous decay; in conveying the bluntness of expression fundamental to
Beckett’s texts, their dampened attack and clipped phrases establishes a
temperamental continuity that is as essential to the music as adherence to the
scores and the parameters for improvisation. This tints materials that would
otherwise be more easily compared to the graying generation of Midwestern
structuralist composers (although Fields has lived in Cologne since 2003,
Chicago is still discernable in his music). Still, the ensemble’s
fastidiousness in articulating Fields’ compositions does not diminish the
individualism of the players; on the contrary, these are among the more
engaging performances to date by Fields himself and by Schubert and Hollenbeck,
the more widely documented of his cohorts (the guitarist-like dexterity of
Roller’s pizzicato always prompts a desire to hear more). This is another
significant recording by Fields.
--
Samuel (Scott Fields)
http://www.scottfields.com/samuel.html
By François Couture
http://www.allmusic.com/album/samuel-mw0000822807
By Troy Collins
http://www.allaboutjazz.com/samuel-scott-fields-new-world-records-review-by-troy-collins.php
By speyburn (fi)
http://www.jazzrytmit.com/wp/s8-levyarvostelut/c29-levyarvostelut/scott-fields-ensemble/
