Fieldwork

Artist Description

All three members of Fieldwork have growing reputations as important young bandleaders, composers, and players. Tyshawn Sorey is a new star on the New York creative music scene who has received critical acclaim for his work with Steve Coleman, Dave Douglas, and Muhal Richard Abrams, and for his expansive debut recording That/Not. Steve Lehman is an emerging heavyweight leader whose output resides on the frontiers of contemporary music, including extensive work with Anthony Braxton and Meshell Ndegeocello. Vijay Iyer is an award-winning pianist, composer, and electronic musician known for his widely respected solo projects, his ongoing collaborations with indie hip-hop poet Mike Ladd and with saxophonist Rudresh Mahanthappa, and his sideman work with Steve Coleman, Roscoe Mitchell, and Wadada Leo Smith.

Tonight’s show celebrates the release of their new recording Door.  The album is born of Fieldwork's signature rehearsal process, which perhaps most resembles that of a rock band, and which they have rigorously maintained for their entire seven-year existence.  They use extensive, non-soloistic group improvisation to expand each intricate composition into something far beyond the sum of its parts:  tightly unified ensemble playing, extroverted and high-impact, but with a mysterious inner logic - a dense, visceral, and richly layered musical world.

Door features compositions by all three members: six by Sorey, three by Iyer and two by Lehman.  But regardless of the composer, each piece is reconfigured and reworked collectively, so that the result reflects the band’s ethos – It sounds like Fieldwork and no other.  With the startling counterpoints that emerge among the three players - Sorey's propulsive polyphony, in tight dialogue with Iyer's laconic, percussive assertions, crosscut by Lehman's tart diagonal slices - the performances feel spontaneous, with surprising twists and turns, with sharp corners leading to unexpected destinations.

Fieldwork continues to work to master its own approach to improvised music – that of collective engagement with pre-composed materials rather than the traditional model of individual solos.  This novel approach opens up endless possibilities for the artists to explore the themes of beauty and emotion, often in the most surprising and unpredictable of ways.