|
Subsequently, he held piano residencies on the
posh West End hotel circuit, including long spells at the Intercontinental,
The Meridian, The Berners and The Braganza, and wrote compositions
for Big Band.
Motivated by
his enduring love of Jewish culture in all its forms, and moving
easily between the worlds of jazz, Klezmer and composition, he has
written a series of Folk Operettas, including Kinneret,
which was performed at the London Mayfair Theatre; Yehudah
Maccabee; Theodore (The Life of Theodore Herzl); and the
music for Children Of The Ghetto (book by Israel
Zangwil, libretto by Ken Hammond). He has also enjoyed setting Hebrew
poetry to his own jazz compositions. Director of the Ram Theatre
Company, and Founder of the 1983 Redbridge Festival of Jewish Music
& Drama, he initiated the Jewish cultural renaissance, now so
well established in the UK.
He founded the Klezmer
Swingers in May 1994, to immediate acclaim from the
UK jazz establishment, including wide publicity by the respected
Time Out and Radio 4 jazz broadcasts. The genesis of Jewish music
and its evolutionary influence on American jazz, was recognized
by his inclusion into the American Encyclopedia of Popular Music.
Sell-out performance at the prestigious London South Bank Centre
followed, and he repeated this success in the debut of the Wally
Fields Jazz Orchestra in January 2002, at the famed
Queen Elizabeth Hall. In 2003, his concert in honour of the Warsaw
Ghetto uprising, featured the first performance of his composition,
the Partizan Rhapsody, which was supported by the
Polish Embassy.
The Orchestra performed
a tribute to George Gershwin at the Queen Elizabeth Hall in January
2005, including the original Paul Whiteman jazz scores of Rhapsody
in Blue, American in Paris and Concerto in F. The concert also included
the Concerto in Jazz written by Bandleader Fields,
as a special tribute to Bandleader Paul Whiteman. The piece traces
the evolution of Big Band Jazz from the Yiddish influences of Alexander
Olshanetsky; the roaring twenties music of the Paul Whiteman Orchestra;
the mellow sounds of the Ted Heath Band; and the avant-garde influences
of Stan Kenton. |