Dale Fielder - Stellar Moments

We can't recall the first time we ever saw Dale Fielder, but we remember the first time we ever heard him. It was a live CD from the Howling Monk, and the jazz on it was molten hot. The real stuff.

His baritone playing especially nailed us. Fielder took Pepper Adams to heart--his solos were huge, squeezing everything out of that big horn, realizing the potential of that amazing instrument. It was a lasting impression indeed.

He actually has a mess of recordings, on all his horns, and each is a variation on his unswerving notion that the best jazz is jazz that's real, which is to say something that seems a little out of step with reality, reality being the dull and compromised thing it tends to be.

Which is one of the reasons Dale's shows are so special. You'll walk into the Hollywood Bar and Grill on Friday and he and his Angel City Quartet (pianist Greg Gordon Smith, bassist Bill Markus and drummer Thomas White) will be playing jazz like it was the only thing that mattered in the universe. It's straight-ahead to be sure--his latest, Stellar Moments.
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