Sfq

SFQ: Four Compositions

by AAJ Staff
June 14, 2005

By Ken Waxman

SFQ Four Compositions Red Toucan 2005

Over the past twenty years, bassist Simon H. Fell has segmented his work between writing large scale compositions for massive orchestras of horns, strings, brass, percussion and playing bass as part of turbulent improv combos--usually in trios with a saxophonist and drummer.

Four Compositions, a two-CD set, appears to be an almost wholly successful attempt to reconcile the formal and audacious parts of his musically ...

Sfq: Four Compositions

by Jerry D'Souza
January 28, 2005

Composition and structure, improvisation and the use of space, time gathered and broken down, music notated and musicians given the leeway to go beyond. Simon H. Fell makes use of these and other concepts like the works of Pierre Boulez. From this amalgam rises his music, often with a slow deliberation, at times with emphasis, at times in a cloak of silence.

The two discs that comprise this double set by SFQ (aka the Simon Fell Quartet/Quintet) are ...

SFQ: Thirteen Rectangles

by Glenn Astarita
December 26, 2002

Long hailed as one of the finest bassist/composers to grace Britain’s always flourishing modern/free jazz arena, Simon H. Fell has released much of his most prolific work on his Bruce’s Fingers label. With this outing, he leads a quintet through fourteen interrelated pieces, distinguished by various degrees of momentum and complex, harmonic formations. As Fell states in the liners, “ The structure of the work is derived from the 1930 painting by Wassily Kandinsky known in English as Thirteen Rectangles. ...