CF088CD
Dénouement

Scott Fields Ensemble

Jeff Parker guitar (left channel) / Scott Fields guitar (right channel) / Jason Roebke double bass (left channel) / Hans Sturm double bass (right channel) / Michael Zerang drums (left channel) / Hamid Drake drums (right channel)

Available on Amazon and iTunes

 8.90

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The music on Dénouement — which was recorded 10 years ago and pressed on Scott Fields’ obscure Geode label — is quite different from his first Clean Feed release, “Beckett.” Although both projects, like virtually all of Fields’ music, intentionally muddle up the written and improvised parts, one is a chamber jazz quartet interpreting word-for-word settings of Samuel Beckett plays while the other is mirror-image trios playing intertwined, but contrasting free-jazz compositions. The double band is a durable tradition in modern and avant-garde jazz. In this case it’s a double trio, with two electric guitars, two double basses, and two drum kits. Other notable double bands include Ornette Coleman’s double quartet on “Free Jazz,” Ned Rothenberg’s Double Band, the Barrage Double Trio, ROVA’s Figure 8 project, and the Arcado / Trio de Clarinettes pairing. Even Max Roach did it, bonding a string quartet to his reeds-trumpet-bass-drums combo. Fields wanted twins because he conceived the music on “Dénouement” as two parts that would fit together like pistons in a cylinder, bolts in nuts, plugs in sockets. The musicians’ playing would be thoroughly tangled but the trios would remain identifiable, like a plate of white and squid-ink spaghetti. Everything matches, even the contrasts, and those introduced by the personalities of the musicians involved: Fields playing the guitar for the right-channel trio, guitarist Jeff Parker — of Tortoise fame — on the left, bassists Hans Sturm for the right-channel trio and Jason Roebke for the left, and a pair of extraordinary drummers, Hamid Drake in the right-channel trio and Michael Zerang, left. But pay attention, there’s a clockwork mechanism here: intermeshed rhythm patterns and tonal systems bind and separate the trios. Everyone knows what to do and when, and does it with an astonishing sense of fluidity. Don’t miss it…

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