Scott Fields Ensemble

"The Diary of Dog Drexel" is a suite of five movements, each of which programmatically portrays an emotional state from the diary. One of the ideas behind "Dog" was to thoroughly blend improvised and composed elements. In the first four movements "Conflicted, Pissed, Bummed, and Agitated" there are at almost all times at least one thread of composition and another of improvisation. The balance between the elements shifts steadily. Muddying the waters further is that many of the extended techniques that are called for in the composed elements are drawn from the usual vocabulary of the ensemble¹s instrumentalists. The fifth movement "Medicated" also blends the two elements, but through a different process. Each of the ensemble¹s instrumentalists, with the barest of instructions from Fields, recorded individual improvisations. These improvisations were the clay that computer musician Gregory Taylor shaped into the fifth movement. As a result of the compositional strategy and the extended techniques used, it can be tricky to distinguish preplanned from spontaneous. The best plan for listening to this music is to treat it as a whole rather than worry about what came from where.