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simon h. fell biography |
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"a major
contemporary musician" The Penguin Guide To Jazz On CD
"one of
England's and perhaps the world's most creative bassists and
composers" Cadence
"by any
account, Simon Fell is one of the most important musicians working
today" Signal To Noise
...these
are genuine quotes, but obviously the assessments therein are purely
sujective and wouldn't necessarily be universally agreed with... |
see below for a full biography/CV; for other types
of information, click on the list below
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compositions
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biography (c.100
words)
this information resource is designed primarily
for the use of critics, authors, students, promoters or anyone else
who has a need for accurate and reliable biographical, discographical
or other information. If what you need isn't here, e-mail.
Simon H. Fell studied
double bass under Peter Leah at Batley Grammar School and
Huddersfield Polytechnic. By the age of 16 he was playing
professionally, accompanying some of the world's most renowned
cabaret performers at the legendary Batley Variety Club. He received
his M.A. from Cambridge University in 1984, having studied at
Fitzwilliam College.
He is best known as a composer/performer in the
fields of improvised music, contemporary composition and experimental
jazz, where his reputation has grown consistently since 1983; he is
described by the Penguin Guide To Jazz as "a very fine
instrumentalist (with) a fine technique and a great flow of ideas."
He has been awarded numerous Bursaries and Grants
from the Arts Council of England and other organisations to further
his performing technique and compositional studies, with the
resulting work touring nationally in 1989, 1991, 1992, 1993, 1995,
1996, 1998, 2001 & 2005. Over 100 recordings of
works/performances have been issued.
Performing units Hession/Wilkinson/Fell,
Fell's improvising trio with Alan Wilkinson and Paul Hession was
one of the earliest units to receive great acclaim; other regular or
occasional groupings have included the trio Something
Else with Mick Beck, Badland,
the Brötzmann/Wilkinson Quartet, VHF,
Butch Morris' London Skyscraper, Derek Bailey's Company,
The Arc with Orphy Robinson and the string trio IST.
His own composition-based groups include SFQ with
Alex Ward, Gail Brand, Alex Maguire, Mark Sanders & Steve Noble, SFT
and SFD.
Other collaborators
He has also worked in small or medium groups with John Butcher,
Peter Brötzmann, Lol Coxhill, Billy Jenkins, Joe Morris, Keith
Tippett, Derek Bailey, Han Bennink, Thurston Moore, Lee Ranaldo, Ellery
Eskelin, Tim Berne and numerous
others, plus with John Zorn & Joey Baron (as part
of Company) and with Elliott Sharp, Billy Bang &
Christian Marclay (as part of New York Skyscraper); Simon
was also a founder member of London Improvisers Orchestra. He
has performed Cardew as a member of Dal Niente Projects,
alongside Dave Smith, Ian Mitchell, John White, etc., and has
collaborated with the Basquiat Strings. Aditionally, he was
for three years a member of the Steve Reid Ensemble, and
toured with Steve, Gilles Peterson and Kieran Hebden (Fourtet).
Festival appearances: UK
include: Oxford Jazz Festival, Company Week, Outside In Festival,
Leeds' Termite Festival, Other Music Festival (Sheffield), Cambridge
Conference of Contemporary Poetry, SPNM Oneday at the ICA, LMC
Festival, London Jazz Festival, Norfolk & Norwich Festival,
Unsung Music Festival at The South Bank, Oxford Festival of
Contemporary Music, Manchester World Music Days, Leicester Jazz
Festival, Stirling Le Weekend, Manchester Jazz Festival, Manchester
New Music Festival, Freedom of the City Festival, Open Ears Festival,
BBC Electric Proms, Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival.
Festival & club
appearances: international include: Company Week in New York,
Leipzig Jazztage, Sound Symposium (Newfoundland), Groupe de Recherche
d'Improvisation Musicale 20th anniversary series (Marseille), Porto
European City Of Culture, Total Music Meeting (Berlin), Nickelsdorf
(Austria), Zurich, Köln, Stakkato (Berlin), Contemporaneamente
2002 (Lodi, Italy), Guimarães Jazz Festival (Portugal), Poetry
& Music: Liège (Belgium), Ulrichsberger Kaleidophon
(Austria), Offene Ohren (München, Germany), Casa da Música
(Porto), Banlieues Bleues (Paris), Festival R de Choc (Paris)
His compositions, in
both jazz, classical and 'fourth stream' idiom, have been performed
throughout Britain and have been broadcast on BBC Radios 1, 3 &
4, plus UK Independent Radio, the BBC World Service and radio or
television stations in France, Belgium, Sweden, Switzerland, Italy,
Austria, Holland, Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the U.S. He has
presented compositions for improvisers at the LMC Festival, the
Termite Festival, the Frakture Festival, Leo Records' Unsung Music
Festival, Sheffield's Open Ears Festival, Stirling's Le Weekend, the
Freedom of the City Festival, the BBC Electric Proms and the
Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival.
His researches into concert music and 'fourth
stream' composition continue, particularly focussed on advanced
composition for musicians from improvised music and jazz traditions.
He has had commissions from, among others, the Arts Council of Great
Britain, Eastern Arts, Anglia Polytechnic University, Leeds
University, Yorkshire & Humberside Arts and BBC Radio 3. He is
described by the Guinness Encyclopaedia of Popular Music as
"a leading composer of his generation, crossing boundaries and
creating music of a passion and originality unusual in Britain".
His 1998 2-hour 42-piece ensemble work Compilation
III was recorded by the Royal Northern
College of Music Big Band in collaboration with improvisers drawn
from several English cities. His compositions for London
Improvisers' Orchestra include Papers, Happy Families,
Köln Klang, Ellington
100 (Strayhorn 85), Morton's
Mobile, Too Busy and Three Mondrians.
Compositions for SFQ include Thirteen
Rectangles, Six Bells Pieces and ...the
old style.... Kaleidozyklen,
his large-scale piece for improvising double bassist and orchestra
was premiered (with Fell as soloist) in November 2000. 2001 saw a
Radio 3 'Jazz On 3' broadcast of Thirteen Rectangles Version 2,
which was repeated in 2002; (the work was subsequently
nominated for the 'new work' award in the 2002 BBC Jazz Awards);Too
Busy was broadcast by BBC Radio 3 in 2002, and three
extended compositions for quintet (Köln Klang, Trapped
By Formalism 2 and Gruppen Modulor 2) were
specially recorded for and broadcast by 'Jazz On 3' in August 2003.
2005 saw the release of Compilation
IV for 60+ musicians, plus a group of
performances of related live works, along with the first performance
of Thirteen
New Inventions,
a major solo piano piece commissioned by Philip Thomas.
2007 saw the performance of a concert-length BBC
Radio 3 commission, Positions & Descriptions (for
18 musicians & prerecorded materials), at the Huddersfield
Contemporary Music Festival; the 18 performers included musicians
from the disciplines of contemporary classical music, free
improvisation and experimental jazz, drawn from several continents.
audio examples:
an
excerpt from Simon's solo improvisation Marcel
Duchamp from Roland Ramanan's Caesura
album (mp3: 3 mins. 2.8 Mb)
an
excerpt from Simon's improvised solo section of Badland's
forthcoming album Six High Windows (mp3: 3 mins. 2.8 Mb)
photo ©
Mike Inns 2004
SHF info:
bibliography
chronology
compositions
list with performance & discographical details
discography
high
resolution (300 dpi) photos for download
selected
press quotes
thumbnail
biography