Simon H. Fell


Simon H. Fell was a bassist and composer; he is primarily known for his work as a free improviser and the composer of ambitiously complex post-serialist works.
Fell began playing double bass in 1973. From 1978 to 1981 he read English Literature at Fitzwilliam College of Cambridge University, an interest that led to ties to many of the poets associated with the Cambridge scene.
Fell's most notable early group was a group with drummer Paul Hession and saxophonist Alan Wilkinson, a free-jazz trio that was exceedingly fast and furious even by the standards of that genre. Their work was primarily released as cassettes and CDs on Fell's label Bruce's Fingers, including Bogey's and the group's only studio album, foom! foom! Their most sonically extreme statement, however, was the grainily recorded The Horrors of Darmstadt.
Other groups in which Fell was a member included the free jazz trio Badland, the improvising string+percussion ensemble ZFP, and SFQ, a quartet/quintet with changing membership, though clarinettist Alex Ward has been a constant. In sharp contrast to the uproar of Hession/Wilkinson/Fell, the trio IST was one of the seminal groups in the development of the ultra-quiet aesthetic now generally called "EAI" or "electroacoustic improvisation". Fell also performed in many other ensembles, including the London Improvisers Orchestra and Derek Bailey's Company Week.
Fell's major sequence of compositions is titled Compilation. Despite the governing title, these are not collections of previous material but new, large-scale works. The musical language makes overt use of serialist procedures, as well as many other techniques: extensive studio layering, overdubbing and reordering of material, and use of aleatoric techniques to "degrade" or distort precomposed structures into new shapes. Free improvisation, rock and jazz all form key parts of the musical language; one section of Compilation IV even includes a simultaneous homage to Karlheinz Stockhausen and Henry Mancini. The cast of musicians drawn on for these pieces usually included a mix of classically trained players, jazzers and free improvising musicians, as well as wild cards like the noise guitarist Stefan Jaworzyn. While virtuoso players such as Evan Parker and John Butcher were essential to the projects, Fell often deliberately made use of amateur or student musicians, too, not as a makeshift but as an intentionally democratising and less predictable element.
Fell died on June 28, 2020.
Other large-scale composition projects included:
composition projects
Hession / Wilkinson / Fell
IST
other groupings