Home » Jazz Articles » Ken Field
Jazz Articles about Ken Field
Ken Field: Sensorium: Music for Dance & Film
by AAJ Italy Staff
C'è molta espressività, molta consapevolezza, molta anima, in questa musica dolente che sarà certamente utile al saxofonista e multistrumentista americano Ken Field per elaborare il lutto per la scomparsa della moglie Karen Aqua, dopo dieci anni di lotta contro il cancro. Karen era una animatrice che si applicava al cinema e alla televisione (per esempio producendo segmenti per la serie Sesame Street) e sin dagli anni ottanta il marito collaborava con lei per le parti musicali complementari alle immagini. In ...
read moreKen Field & The Revolutionary Snake Ensemble: The Musical Road Less Taken
by Tod Smith
Saxophonist/composer Ken Field describes the Revolutionary Snake Ensemble as a funk and street beat brass band playing New Orleans and other modern improvised celebratory styles." Playing original compositions and those of artists as diverse as Billy Idol and Ornette Coleman, the RSE was formed in 1990 to entertain a at a pagan women's ritual celebration. The project continued and today RSE is a fixture on the Boston, New York and New Orleans musical scenes. RSE's two discs--Year of the Snake ...
read moreRevolutionary Snake Ensemble: Forked Tongue
by AAJ Italy Staff
Il Revolutionary Snake Ensemble di Ken Field conferma con questo eccitante Forked Tongue la buonissima impressione che ci aveva lasciato col disco di esordio Year of the Snake (uscito per Innova nel 2003). La trama di fondo è sempre quella delle marching band di New Orleans ma gli sviluppi dell’azione ci portano inesorabilmente ben oltre i giorni nostri, in un futuro interspaziale dove Sun Ra è il presidente dell’Universo. Del resto basterebbe un’occhiata al repertorio di questo album per capire ...
read moreKen Field: Under the Skin
by AAJ Italy Staff
La Bridgman/Packer Dance Company ha commissionato al saxofonista d’avanguardia Ken Field la musica per un proprio progetto multimediale che prevede un approccio molto disinibito alle meraviglie della coreografia e del materiale video, in continuità con le intuizioni di Merce Cunningham e John Cage che negli anni quaranta rivoluzionarono l’approccio sin lì piuttosto ingessato alle collaborazioni fra musicisti e danzatori. Ken Field approfitta con grande intelligenza dell’occasione e recupera materiali rimasti nel cassetto e li mischia con nuove intuizioni per poi ...
read moreKen Field: Under the Skin
by Samuel Chell
The opening track's sounds of bass with alto saxophone improvising over a street beat are practically an invitation to dance, especially to anyone who's been a second liner" in a traditional New Orleans funeral recessional. This music, after all, was composed by alto saxophonist Ken Field as dance music," an integral component of a multimedia work, Under the Skin, combining live dance performance, original music, and visual technology. The technology used in constructing the musical pieces is apt to make ...
read moreBirdsongs of the Mesozoic: Dancing on A'A
by AAJ Staff
Dancing on A'A documents the improvising quartet Birdsongs of the Mesozoic early in their second decade. It's highly unusual for a group of improvisers to stick together for over 20 years, but this is hardly an average group. While other stable musical units might doggedly pursue the same style to perfection, Birdsongs aims for the anti-style. Anything that crosses genre boundaries is fair game for this group.
On Dancing on A'A, electric and acoustic instruments arrive at fruitful collisions. Birdsongs ...
read moreBirdsongs Of The Mesozoic: Petrophonics
by Glenn Astarita
With their 10th recording titled Petrophonics, Boston Massachusetts based “Birdsongs Of The Mesozoic” have perhaps achieved the pinnacle of mastery with this truly superb newly released effort. Here, pianist/composer Erik Lindgren and woodwind specialist Ken Field cap off a string of successful solo ventures as the duo realigns with guitarist Michael Bierylo and synthesizer ace Rick Scott for the band’s latest and first effort in over five years.
“BOTM” continues to defy any rigid semblance of categorization yet surge onward ...
read more