The final band line-up featured previously established jazz musicians in the form of Chick Corea sideman Tim Garland and veteran bass player Laurence Cottle.
By 1984 (and while coming off the end of a four-year King Crimson reunion) Bruford's interest in playing jazz had been revived by his improvising piano-and-drums partnership with Patrick Moraz.
By now a firm advocate and endorser of the Simmons electronic drum kit, Bruford began to explore how this instrument could be introduced into a creative jazz context.
Stewart also contributed bass synthesizer and "very occasional" keyboards (most notably on "Making a Song and Dance" and "Pressure") while his wife and musical partner Barbara Gaskin added sampled vocals to Ballamy's ballad "It Needn’t End In Tears".
The West Coast leg of the planned American tour was ultimately abandoned in order to allow Ballamy to fly home to marry Jess and spend the last few weeks of her life with her.
Having given Ballamy some time to mourn and with Mick Hutton having left the band following the American tour, Earthworks reconvened in autumn 1988 with a new bass player, Tim Harries (another former Bates collaborator who’d also played with Steeleye Span).
Following Bruford's final commitments to the "Union" tour in March, the band reconvened in April and July for the trans-Canada jazz festivals.
Although arguably the most advanced electronic percussion set in existence, the Simmons kit's pioneering technology meant that it was difficult to service, fragile (as evidenced by frequent damage at airport baggage reclaim), unpredictable and unreliable (as had been humiliatingly demonstrated at the Yes concert in Madison Square Garden).
He had, however, continued to do jazz-related work with the Buddy Rich Big Band and with his fusion group Bruford Levin Upper Extremities (B.L.U.E.
Having retreated from the soured King Crimson situation in late 1997, Bruford met the young Scottish pianist Steve Hamilton, whose musicianship inspired him to launch a new version of Earthworks.
In late 1998, following initial UK concerts, the band (now featuring a new double bass player, Mark Hodgson) began recording the fourth Earthworks album, A Part, and Yet Apart.
During the same year, A Part, And Yet Apart was released on Earthworks' new record label (the King Crimson associated Discipline Global Mobile) and the band played at jazz festivals in Eastern Europe.
[12] By this point (and in spite of financial incentives to do otherwise), Bruford had firmly ditched the rock music past which had dogged him since his first jazz-related projects in the late 1970s.
As part of this he had become not only the bandleader and main composer for Earthworks, but also (in true cottage industry fashion) the band's manager, booking agent and publicist.
[13] During 2000, Earthworks played several London dates with veteran jazz guitar star Larry Coryell, who subsequently covered for Patrick Clahar for a Spanish tour which the saxophonist had to miss due to illness.
In October, the band embarked on a 19-date British tour and began recording their next album in the last months of the year, with Bruford producing in addition to his other duties.
[14] Earthworks toured Japan, Spain, South Africa and the western UK prior to the May 2001 release of the band's fifth studio album, The Sound of Surprise.
Once again, the music had been predominantly composed by Bruford, but in future he would pass all compositional duties over to other members in order to concentrate on running the band.
An exception was a UK tour in the spring of 2003 which enabled the band to practise new Tim Garland-composed material and culminated in a headlining season at Ronnie Scott's Jazz Club in London.
[18] Also in 2004, Bruford ended his business relationship with Discipline Global Mobile and set up two small interrelated record labels of his own, Summerfold and Winterfold.
[18] In April 2004 Steve Hamilton was replaced as Earthworks pianist by Gwilym Simcock, an outstanding young musician[18] who was already being widely talked about and who now needed to build the foundations of a career.
At around this time, Bruford was losing patience with the economic and bureaucratic nature of a transatlantic music career which constantly created obstacles with visas and musicians union demands.
Earthworks toured the UK between April and July 2004, during which period the band teamed up with the Tim Garland-led nonet The Underground Orchestra for several dates.