Updated: July 21, 2022
Born: January 26
Ken Field is a saxophonist, flautist, percussionist, and composer. Since 1988 he has been a member of the internationally acclaimed electrified modern music ensemble Birdsongs of the Mesozoic, with whom he has recorded eight CDs. Field leads the Revolutionary Snake Ensemble, a experimental and improvisational brass band, and performs with the community-based Second Line Social Aid & Pleasure Society Brass Band. Since 2015 he has annually led a pick-up band of unafiliated musicians at the HONK!Oz Festival in Wollongong, NSW, Australia. His solo releases document his work for layered saxophones and his soundtracks for dance and film. Field was named a 2017 Finalist in Music Composition by the Massachusetts Cultural Council. Field has performed in the US, Canada, Mexico, France, Germany, Spain, Hungary, Portugal, Sweden, Ireland, Italy, Poland, Australia, New Zealand, & Japan, and has been awarded residency fellowship grants at the MacDowell Colony (New Hampshire), the Ucross Foundation (Wyoming), the Fundacion Valparaiso (Spain), the MacNamara Foundation (Maine), and the Atlantic Center for the Arts (Florida). His musical projects have been featured in The New York Times, Saxophone Journal, The Boston Globe, The Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, Tower Pulse, Billboard, Cadence, The Wire, The Orlando Sentinel, The New Yorker, and many other publications. Field has performed at the Roswell (NM) Jazz Festival, for President Bill Clinton, with Trombone Shorty, Charles Neville, Grammy-winning percussionist Glen Velez, former J. Geils frontman Peter Wolf, the Jazz Composers Alliance Orchestra, The Violent Femmes, and the Georgia Symphony Orchestra. In 2004 he was commissioned by Bridgman/Packer Dance to compose music for Under the Skin, which has been performed widely. A CD of this music was released in 2006 on Innova Recordings. Double Expose, his second commission for Bridgman/Packer, premiered in 2010. In 2000 Field released Tokyo in F, the live recording of an improvised concert he gave in Tokyo with three prominent Japanese musicians he met only just before the performance. His 1999 release of layered saxophone music, Pictures of Motion, integrates elements of ambient, hiphop, minimalism, swing, acid, improv, and Balkan processional music. The CD includes two of Field's compositions for Sesame Street, and features a guest appearance by renowned multi- instrumentalist Amy Denio. Field's 1996 debut solo release, Subterranea, documented his multitracked saxophone improvisations, recorded mostly in an underground chamber in Roswell, New Mexico.
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All About Jazz Articles
Album Review
- Pictures Of Motion by AAJ Staff
- Tokyo In F by AAJ Staff
- Tokyo in F by Glenn Astarita
- Under the Skin by Samuel Chell
Interview
Read more articlesArticles Across the Web
...or were mentioned in an All About Jazz article.
May 21, 2018
Ken Field's Revolutionary Snake Ensemble Releases "I Want That Sound!"
May 09, 2011
Ken Field's Revolutionary Snake Ensemble Returns to NYC
April 18, 2011
Downtown Boston's Jazz Swarms for Jazz Week from JazzBoston
January 26, 2011
Jazz Musician of the Day: Ken Field
January 26, 2010
Jazz Musician of the Day: Ken Field
March 06, 2009
Revolutionary Snake Ensemble's Ken Field Interviewed at AAJ
January 26, 2009
"A stone cold killer diller" Offbeat Magazine, New Orleans, LA
"Sly funky tuneful avant garde jazz" New York Music Daily
"Touches all the right cornerstones of jazz, but also funks my socks off!" Kyle Press, WKDU, Philadelphia, PA
Primary Instrument
Saxophone
Location
Boston
Willing to teach
Advanced only
Credentials/Background
Experienced and patient teacher with national & international performance credentials; private half-hour lessons in West Concord; Monday afternoon/evening; all levels; contact for references & details.
Clinic/Workshop Information
1. "Improvisation for Non-Improvisors" 2. "Soundtrack Design for Animation" 3. "Brass Bands from Bourbon Street to Sesame Street" 4. "Technology as a Tool" Presentation, residency, and workshop experience includes Wellesley College (MA), Alfred University (NY), Western New Mexico University, Sheridan College (WY), the Artists' Association of Nantucket (MA), Applewild School (MA), Camden-Rockport High School/YouthArts (ME), New Mexico Military Institute, the Carolina Film Festival (NC), Emory University (GA), the University of North Carolina, Hilo & Waiakea High Schools (HI), Dartmouth College (NH), the Massachusetts College of Art (MA), Lebanon Valley College (PA), the Boston Museum of Science (MA), the Creative Music Orchestra (New Haven, CT), the Fitchburg (MA) Art Museum, and, with Delfeayo Marsalis, the Nunez Correctional Learning Center (Port Sulpher, LA). The Saxophone Journal featured a Masterclass CD by Field based on the layered saxophone improvisations from his first solo CD Subterranea.
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