When Lawrence Fields came home to St. Louis recently to teach an Artist Residency for Jazz St. Louis, it was an alumnus returning as a teaching artist. Though Fields, who released his first album as a leader (To the Surface, Rhythm ‘N’ Flow Records) earlier this year, created his own curriculum at Jazz St. Louis as a precocious high school student.
When Fields saw the pianist Cyrus Chestnut play a Jazz St. Louis educational date at a local school, Chestnut invited the avid youth to see his concert at Jazz at the Bistro. “That was the first time I’d ever been to a jazz club, and it changed my life completely,” Fields said. “I begged my parents to go back. He was there four nights – I went all four nights.”
Fields went back to the jazz club whenever he could. Still a child – his precocity as a student had enabled him to skip middle school; he would start college at 16 – he became a regular guest of the house, thanks to then-Executive Director Gene Dobbs Bradford and Artistic Director Bob Bennett. “I had an opportunity to go and see all these world-class shows, essentially for free,” Fields said.
Fields’ parents provided him with the tools. His dad, a physician, got him a keyboard; his mom, a stockbroker, bought him books on playing piano. The youth eventually worked himself up from the crowd to the stage at Jazz at the Bistro, playing piano behind rising local artists such as Keyon Harrold.
“St. Louis is exactly the right size to be inclusive,” Fields said. “If you’re good at your instrument, you’re gonna have a lot of opportunities. That was a huge help to me growing up.”
Fields found the friends he had been looking for since his precocity separated him from his peer group. Students who skip grades tend to struggle socially. Music spared Fields the worst of all that. “If you play music, you meet other musicians, then it’s like a little community,” Fields said.
Fields’ mother was responsible for his next breakthrough at his next school. She introduced him to the son of a friend, Daniel R. Brown (former St. Louis American reporter, now a judge and lawyer). The mothers knew their sons were both studying at Washington University in St. Louis and playing jazz. Brown, a drummer, introduced Fields to his first true jazz band. “Danny brought me into this whole other world,” Fields said.
Fields loved playing jazz so much that he could no longer tolerate computer science. “Playing jazz was so interesting, so stimulating,” he said. “And also so social, right? Which being alone with the computer writing code wasn’t.” Precocious again, he landed a full-time job as a software developer at age 18 and dropped out of college when most students his age were just getting started.
He decided that he wanted to study music at a school known for its music programs. His father drove him to Chicago to audition for the Berklee College of music, based in Boston, which was offering a national audition tour. Fields was admitted with a half scholarship that was soon upgraded to a full scholarship.
Fields decided to focus on studio production, rather than performance or composition, but he absorbed many varied musical influences. “In the practice rooms there’s one person playing country music, someone else playing gospel, someone’s doing blues, someone’s doing hip-hop,” Fields said. “So, we’ve got a blues singer and a gospel drummer and a jazz bassist and a prog rock guitarist, and we’re gonna see what comes out of it.”
Berklee also offered elite higher education’s most valuable intangible: professional networking. “There was a constant rotation of great musicians coming through Berklee,” Fields said. “I met some of the people who would help give me my first gigs.”
St. Louis also helped to show him the way forward in Boston. Fields went native in the local scene playing with icons such as Willie Akins. At an Akins gigs at Spruill’s, an audience member told Fields to check out Wally’s, a local club, when he got to Boston. Fields wasn’t old enough to get into Wally’s, but the door man there told him to go around back and listen on the fire escape. Fields was blown away.
When the musicians came out after the show, they were only a little older than he was. “I never heard people around that age play like that,” Fields said, “so I got to know them.” He worked his way up from the fire escape to the stage. He played at Wally’s with Warren Wolf, a vibraphonist and drummer, who introduced Fields to the saxophonist Tim Warfield, who introduced Fields to Nicholas Peyton – who would give Fields his first touring gig overseas.
His value as a sideman has kept Fields paying the bills in his adopted city of New York – and meeting the people he would need to release his own music. His label deal with Rhythm ‘N’ Flow Records, based in Germany, came from touring Europe with Joe Lovano, who had taught Fields at Berklee.
The touring experience as a sideman, the label connection, the production skills learned at Berklee, and his evolution as a composer culminated in To the Surface. “I’ve been touring and playing with other artists and collecting my own musical ideas,” Fields said. “How do I take all these different influences and put them into something that has a consistent sound? I didn’t want the album to give people musical whiplash.”
As a go-to sideman now picking his own sidemen, Fields enlisted bassist Yasushi Nakamura and drummer Corey Fonville. “A large part of the sound of the record is due to them,” Fields said. “They did an amazing job, which let me focus on being creative in the recording.” Fields produced his debut at Big Orange Sheep in Brooklyn, home to a 9-foot Fazioli grand piano. “That studio has people who are extremely skilled but also very laid back and very kind,” Fields said.
It was a realization of a lifelong dream when Fields performed his debut record as a leader at Jazz at the Bistro following its release in February. By the time he returned to Jazz St. Louis again to teach and perform in April, his music had evolved. “The tunes have new sections or things that weren’t there,” Fields said. “All the tunes are continuing to evolve.”
Fields also continues to evolve from in-demand sideman to bandleader running his own show. “That makes this period of time fascinating because it’s not like I built up the structure of being a band leader, right?” Fields said. “The artists that I played with had managers and booking agents, but now I’m on my own. It can be intimidating, and there are a lot of talented people who are just not able to deal with it. But, I told myself, listen: This is my challenge in life.”