FIVE FROZEN EGGS with THE SCOTT FIELDS ENSEMBLE 7

Description

In his fifth CD release since his return to improvised music early this decade after a 15-year hiatus, Scott Fields continues to draw on the innovations of the Chicago free-jazz movement while adding post-free tonal and rhythmic organization. "Fields' evolution from a free improviser to one who employs pre-set structures is instructive not only to map the development of a significant player, but for the light it sheds on the free-jazz movement," writes Harvey Pekar in Jazziz magazine. The ensemble members on Five Frozen Eggs–which Coda and Cadence magazine critic Andrew Bartlett says "merges the tensile throttle of Disaster at Sea (Music and Arts) with the charged largeness of 48 Motives (Cadence Jazz Records)–are ideally equipped to run wild within the structures Fields creates.

Pianist Marilyn Crispell has contributed her precise, yet unbridled, playing to such diverse projects as through-composed concerti, painstakingly constructed compositions with the Anthony Braxton groups, and freely improvised trios with Chicago tenorist Fred Anderson and Five Frozen Eggs percussionist Hamid Drake. Drake is equally comfortable in his energy-music collaborations with Peter Brötzmann and the post-free ensembles of Pharaoh Sanders. And double bass virtuoso Hans Sturm performs in symphonic settings, straight-ahead jazz combos with leaders such as Larry Coryell, and new-music and free-jazz ensembles with innovators such as Joseph Jarman and Roscoe Mitchell.

CD-987(1) FIVE FROZEN EGGS with THE SCOTT FIELDS ENSEMBLE. 7 compositions by Scott Fields performed by Marilyn Crispell, piano; Hamid Drake, percussion; Fields, guitar; & Hans Strum, double bass. (DDD)