Boiler House Jazz Concert: Ken Field & David Harris

Ken Field is a saxophonist, flautist, and composer. Since 1988 he has been a member of the internationally acclaimed modern music ensemble Birdsongs of the Mesozoic, with whom he has recorded eight CDs. He leads the Revolutionary Snake Ensemble, an experimental & improvisational brass band. His solo releases document his work for layered saxophones and his soundtracks for dance and film. Field has performed for President Bill Clinton, with Trombone Shorty, Charles Neville, and former J. Geils frontman Peter Wolf, with the Jazz Composers Alliance Orchestra, and with the Georgia Symphony Orchestra.

Field has appeared throughout North America, Europe, and Asia, and has been awarded composition residency fellowship grants at the MacDowell Colony, the Ucross Foundation, the Fundación Valparaíso, and the Atlantic Center for the Arts. His musical projects have been featured in The New York Times, Saxophone Journal, Boston Globe, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, Billboard, Cadence, The Wire, Orlando Sentinel, Downbeat, and many other publications. His music is heard regularly on the television program Sesame Street. Field was named a 2017 Finalist in Music Composition by the Massachusetts Cultural Council.

Field is an Applied Microphone Technology Endorser and a Vandoren Performing Artist. He hosts The New Edge, a weekly radio program on WMBR in Cambridge. He is former Chair of the Cambridge Bicycle Committee, a member of the HONK! Organizing Committee, and is President of the Boards of JazzBoston and Tutoring Plus of Cambridge.

David Harris has distinguished himself on trombone, tuba, and as a composer/arranger in a multitude of musical styles. Mr. Harris has performed around the world, including the Berlin Jazz Festival, Montreal Jazz Festival, the Sauti za Busara in Zanzibar, Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, the Philadelphia Pops, the Smithsonian Institute, and jazz clubs such as the Blue Note, Tonic, and the Knitting Factory. A 1981 graduate of New England Conservatory, Mr. Harris associates with a wide variety of musicians performing jazz, pop, and traditional folk music. Mr. Harris is an associate professor at Berklee College of Music in the Harmony department. As a jazz composer, he has won the Massachusetts Cultural Council Fellowship for music composition 3 times.

David is longtime trombonist and composer/arranger for the avant gaarde big band Jazz Composers’ Alliance, most recently performing, composing, conducting and producing their newest release “The JCA Orchestra Live at the BPC”..He is trombonist and tubist in the Revolutionary Snake Ensemble, a 2nd line brass band that bridges traditional New Orleans-styled music with modern jazz. David has been featured in soundtracks for TV, commercials, Woody Allen’s “Deconstructing Harry”, a klezmer soundtrack for the movie “Stranger Among Us”, the soundtrack for the movie “Opposite of Sex,” as well as recording on over 50 albums. David performed in the US, Canada, and Africa with the Ethiopian funk band Debo Band, recording on their debut album on the Sub Pop label, as well as recording his composition “Trek from Ethiopia” for the Trikont label compilation “Beyond Addis”. David’s most recent project is Triarky, a power trio featuring Mimi Rabson on e. violin, David on e. tuba, and Phil Neighbors on drums, performing original rock, ska, funk, and jazz.