Search - Scott Fields :: Samuel

Scott Fields's Samuel, the second album of compositions based on Beckett's plays, follows 2007's highly acclaimed Beckett. One could argue though that Fields' compositions are in fact closer to the original texts than most other Beckett-inspired musical works, for the simple reason that the Chicago-born guitarist and composer actually derives his music directly from them, not only by assigning precise pitches, chords, time values and rhythms to particular words and phrases in the text and transforming Beckett's wordplay into clearly delineated melodic lines and harmonic fields, but also by associating his meticulous stage and lighting directions with particular sounds and gestures. It's no coincidence that Scott Fields has so far chosen to work with Beckett's plays, rather than his prose or poetry, since a sense of character and identity or loss thereof is as central to his music as it is to Beckett's dramaturgy.