This session at Evil Clown Headquarters brings together a sextet featuring PEK, Michael Knoblach, Robin Amos, Bob Moores, Tony Leva, and Jonathan LaMaster, blending horns, strings, electronics, and percussion to create a richly textured improvisational journey, highlighting deep connections within the Boston improvisation scene and showcasing dynamic interactions shaped by both past collaborations and new encounters.
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Sample The Album:
David Peck (PEK)-clarinet, contralto & contrabass clarinets, alto & tenor saxophones, glissophone, bass tromboon, melodica, soma pipe, [d]ronin, 17 string bass, nagoya, theremin with moogerfooger, gongs, plate gong, Englephone, danmo, brontosaurus & tank bells, wood & temple blocks, log drums, cow bells, gavel, almglocken, temple bells, Tibetan bowls, bells & chimes, ratchet, novation peak, moog subsequent, Linnstrument controllers, ms 20, lfo percolator, lfo violin, nagoya, spring and chime rod boxes, chimes, rubber chicken, clown horn, orchestral chimes and anvils, balafon, xylophone, crotales, glockenspiel, flex a tone
Bob Moores-Squier Sonic Bass modded into tenor guitar played through Zoom multi efx pedal, Electric trumpet with electric mouthpiece played through Zoom multi efx pedal and additional efx chain, Donner Essential B1 Analog Bass Synthesizer and Sequencer, Vaux Flores Eyetron pocket synthesizer, 2 LFO drone generator with eft, Signal generator with eft, Wobble box, Bamboo flute, Animoog Z app on iPad mini, gongs, brontosaurus bell, log drums, wood blocks, temple blocks, crotales, orchestral castanets, Tibetan bell, Englephone, chimes,moog subsequent, novation peak, Linnstrument controllers, nord stage 3, psychic mumbling
Jonathan LaMaster-violin, spring & chime rod boxes, ocarina, wind siren, Tibetan bells & chimes, orchestral castanets, shakers, slide whistle, gongs, crotales, glockenspiel, wood blocks, shakers
Robin Amos-studio logic sledge, roland VP 03, novation peak, Linnstrument controllers, spring boxes, 17 string bass
Tony Leva-double bass
Michael Knoblach-frame drum, festival drum, Tibtean bowls, orchestral castanets, seed pod rattles, shakers, bells
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Label: Evil Clown
Catalog ID: 9387
Squidco Product Code: 35530
Format: CDR
Condition: New
Released: 2024
Country: USA
Packaging: Digipack
Recorded live at Evil Clown Headquarters, Waltham MA on July 29, 2024 by Joel Simches.
"In May of 2021, I opened Evil Clown Headquarters to other fully vaccinated musicians, and the first session of the new age was scheduled for the second set of the Expanse sound world. Michael and I both enjoyed the auspicious first set right before the pandemic shut down and so the collaboration became an ongoing Evil Clown project, both as a duet for some sets and as a larger unit for others.
Now in the Fall of 2024, Michael has played on dozens of Evil Clown sets, and we have logged 13 Expanse sessions of several different flavors. One of those flavors is a more electronics leaning variety. We did a trio with Eric Woods (analog synth) and another with Robin Amos (synth). This set features a larger electronics section more typical of Simulacrum. Initially, I had this down as a quartet with Michael and I with guests Robin Amos and Bob Moores (space trumpet, guitar & electronics).
A while back I had invited a great double bassist, Tony Leva, to a different session. Tony was an Evil Clown regular during the early part of the Contemporary Period between roughly 2016 and 2018 or so. He appeared on roughly a dozen performances by Leap of Faith and String Theory including three of the scored performances for the Leap of Faith Orchestra. He returned to graduate school at the Longy School of Music at that time and became a bit too busy to participate. However, I kept him active in the list, and he had signed up eventually for a session a month or two back. As is turned out, on the day of that set he cut his thumb badly enough that he had to go to the emergency room and of course had to withdraw. Afterwards, we looked for another session already on the book that he could get in on and we landed on this one, so we grew the ensemble to quintet.
A month or so, Robin reached out and asked if I minded if he invited violinist Jonathan LaMaster to the session. I'm always looking for good, qualified string players, and as it turns out Jonathan also performed on one of the Leap of Faith Orchestra scored performances. Seems like a coincidence, but Jonathan played with Robin and at various times with our old main drummer Yuri Zbitnov and current percussionist Michael Knoblach in the Boston seminal post-rock band Cul-de-Sac back in the day (90s I think). Yuri had invited Jonathan to the LOFO set in 2017. Michael invited Robin to his first Expanse set a few years back, and now Robin has invited Jonathan back into the fold.
The Boston improvisation scene is broad and deep - this is not the first time that new players have arrived from their previous associations with regulars currently in the Roster. In fact, it is the most common way that we add new members, and this method has some distinct advantages over cold acquisitions: More is known about the playing of the newbies and common improvisation experience previously exists between the new arrivals and one or more of the existing Roster.
Anyway, the combination of 4 contemporary regulars along with two guests from back in the day made a great sextet combining horns, strings, electronics and percussion. Both Tony and Jonathan really enjoyed the broad palate improvisation experience unique to Evil Clown Headquarters and we are sure to see more of them in the future in this and other contexts..."-David Peck, from the liner notes
Artist Biographies
• Show Bio for David Peck (PEK) "PEK (aka David Peck) is a multi-instrument improviser who plays all kinds of instruments including saxophones, clarinets, double reeds, percussion, electronics and auxiliary sound making devices of all kinds. PEK was born in 1964 and started playing clarinet and piano in elementary school. In 7th grade he started saxophones, first on alto, then switching to tenor in high school. He spent 10 years playing in rock bands and studying classical and jazz saxophone with Kurt Heisig in the San Jose CA area before moving to Boston in 1989 to attend Berklee where he studied performance with George Garzone. While Berklee was an excellent place to study harmony, voice training and other important aspects of a conventional formal music training course of study, it was not a very good environment for learning contemporary (or pure) improvisation (apart from his work with George). PEK did find, however, that Boston had a thriving improvisation scene, and it was here that he developed his mature pure improvisation language. During the 90s, PEK performed with many notable improvisers including Masashi Harada, Glynis Lomon, William Parker, Laurence Cooke, Eric Zinman, Glenn Spearman, Raqib Hassan, Charlie Kohlhase, Steve Norton, Keith Hedger, Mark McGrain, Sydney Smart, Matt Samolis, Martha Ritchey, Larry Roland, Dennis Warren, Yuri Zbitnov, Craig Schildhauer, Keith Fullerton Whitman, Leslie Ross, Rob Bethel, Wayne Rogers, Eric Rosenthal, Taylor Ho Bynum, Tatsuya Nakatani, James Coleman, B'hob Rainey and George Garzone. PEK met cellist Glynis Lomon when they played together in the Masashi Harada Sextet which existed between 1990 and 1992. They developed a deep musical connection which they continued following the MHS; first with the Leaping Water Trio for a few years and then with the first version of Leap of Faith in 1994. Leap of Faith was very active in Boston from that time until 2001 and went through a series of several core ensembles which always included both PEK and Glynis. Other key Leap of Faith core members during this period were Mark McGrain (trombone), Craig Schildhauer (double bass), Sydney Smart (drums), Yuri Zbitnov (drums) and James Coleman (theremin). Leap of Faith was always a very modular unit with constantly shifting personnel and many different guests. The early Leap of Faith period concluded in 2001 with a dual bill at an excellent room at MIT called Killian Hall with George Garzone's seminal trio the Fringe. At this time, PEK changed careers for his day gig, returning to college for a computer science degree and beginning to work in the structural engineering industry at Simpson Gumpertz & Heger. He became far too busy to continue the heavy music schedule, and preferring not to do music casually, he entered a long musically dormant period. Flash forward to early 2014. PEK was a regular mail order customer of Downtown Music Gallery, the premiere specialty shop in Manhattan for free jazz, contemporary classical and other new music. While in New York on SGH business, he went down to DMG and had a lengthy conversation with proprietor Bruce Lee Gallanter about the early Leap of Faith period. He then sent Bruce a package of about 15 CD titles from the 90s and was pleasantly surprised when Bruce managed to sell nearly all of it. This public interest in the old catalog spurred PEK into getting back into performance. He reformed Leap of Faith with Glynis Lomon (cello, voice, aquasonic), Yuri Zbitnov (drums) and newcomer Steve Norton (clarinets and saxophones) and started to record and perform in early 2015. Now having access to financial resources always absent in the early period, PEK began to accumulate a huge collection of instruments both for himself and also to expand the palate of Leap of Faith and the other projects soon to follow. He acquired new recording equipment and many new saxophones, clarinets, double reeds, metal and wooden percussion instruments, electronic instruments, signal processing equipment and other sound-making devices from many cultures. He revived his old record label, Evil Clown, and created reissues and new releases for much of the early period work by Leap of Faith and many of his other projects to sell at shows, DMG and the internet (around 100 archival titles). The Arsenal of equipment has a grand purpose: To establish a large scale aesthetic problem to use the instruments to make long form broad palate improvisations with dramatic transformation and development. The very broad palate enables the long improvisations to evolve with very different movements and pronounced development over their length. PEK started the Leap of Faith Orchestra, a greatly expanded Leap of Faith, to achieve this purpose along with a number of smaller ensembles which are sub-units of the full orchestra including String Theory (focusing on orchestral strings), Metal Chaos Ensemble (focusing on metallic percussion), Turbulence (horn players), Mekaniks (electronics) and Chicxulub (space rock). In all, the Evil Clown roster includes over 40 musicians who contribute to one or more of the various projects, with PEK participating in all of them. Leap of Faith has also had some special guests like Steve Swell (trombone), Thomas Heberer (trumpet), Jeremiah Cymerman (clarinet) and Jim Hobbs (alto sax). The Leap of Faith Orchestra happens whenever several of these groups play together at the same time, or the ensemble exceeds 7 or 8 players. The Full Orchestra is a special case discussed below. The current roster is comprised in part of: - Core Leap of Faith: PEK, Glynis Lomon, Yuri Zbitnov (Steve Norton has since left to go to Graduate School) - Percussion: Andria Nicodemou (vibes), Kevin Dacey (perc), Joe Hartigan (perc), Syd Smart (drums) - Strings: Jane Wang (cello), Clara Kebabian (violin), Tony Leva (bass), Mimi Rabson (violin), Kirsten Lamb (bass), Brendan Higgins (bass), Silvain Castellano (bass), Rob Bethel (cello), Kit Demos (bass), Matt Scutchfield (violin), Helen Sherrah-Davies (violin) - Piano: Eric Zinman, Peter Cassino, Emilio Gonzales - Horns: Dave Harris (tuba, trombone), Charlie Kohlhase (saxes), Bob Moores (trumpet), Sara Honeywell (trombone), Forbes Graham (trumpet), John Baylies (tuba), Dan O'Brien (woodwinds), Zack Bartolomei (woodwinds), Kat Dobbins (trombone), Steve Provizer (trumpet, baritone horn), Matt Samolis (flute) - Electronics: Greg Grinnell, Jason Adams (electric bass, electronics) - Guitar: Dru Wesely, Grant Beale, Chris Florio - Voice: Dei Xhrist Evil Clown is documenting the ongoing solutions to this aesthetic challenge by creating limited CD editions and digital download albums of every performance and studio session by this array of ensembles. Interested audience can track the development of the grand scale project over the many releases - over 80 albums recorded and released so far between Jan of 2015 and March of 2017. All of the bands are highly modular, changing personnel and instrumentation with each meeting. The result is an enormous amount of music that shares the same fundamental improvisational language but differs from event to event greatly both in sonority (overall sound) and specific detail. For the full Leap of Faith Orchestra, PEK composes a graphic notation score to guide the improvisation. The full Orchestra is comprised of roughly 20 players from the roster and performs twice a year. Two performances have occurred to date - The Expanding Universe in June of 2016 and Supernovae in November of 2016. Composition for Possible Universes is completed and the work will be performed on May 28, 2017 with another performance (score not yet begun) scheduled for November. The scores use a device called Frame Notation where written English descriptions of the overall sonority desired and simple graphic symbols are given durations for each player on their part along with direction on when to play and when not to play. The directions are put in little boxes called frames which are arranged on a timeline and are simple enough to be immediately understood by the performers. Horizontal lines, called Duration Bars, extend across the page indicating when each Event (the Frame + the Duration Bar) begins and ends. An Event can be intended for the full ensemble, a defined group within the ensemble (for example, Metal Chaos Ensemble), a custom group (for example, Tubas), or an individual (for example, Andria Feature). Parts are the full score annotated with Hiliters so that each player's instructions stand out. They can clearly see their individual instructions, but can also see the big picture, enabling far more knowledge about the pending actions of the rest of the ensemble than typical in pure improvisation. The players track the elapsed time on a very large sports clock. There is no melodic, harmonic or rhythmic information specified. This system allows PEK to compose detailed Ensemble Events without having to notate pitches or rhythms which would require significant rehearsal to accurately achieve." ^ Hide Bio for David Peck (PEK) • Show Bio for Bob Moores "Bob Moores Having spent most of his life flying under the radar working on obscure projects that may some day come to the light of day, trumpeter/guitarist/composer/improviser/artist/photographer/poet/conceptualist Bob Moores has finally started to emerge into the light playing in the free improvisation collective Fable Grazer and through his solo project Resonator. Having played every kind of music imaginable on trumpet in every kind of setting from classical to funk to blues to R&B to pop punk and metal to jazz, in small and large ensembles, Bob has settled on playing only freely improvised music at this stage of his evolution, both in group situations and as a solo artist. Moores is an exponent of what he calls unschooled primitive coloristic guitar having started to play in earnest with Fable Grazer. He has been composing music since he was a child and composes and arranges for a variety of ensembles types, instrumentations and genres." ^ Hide Bio for Bob Moores • Show Bio for Jonathan LaMaster Jonathan LaMaster is an American violinist and guitarist based in Boston. He is known for the groups Cul de Sac, Saturnalia String Trio, Brian Carpenter & The Confessions. ^ Hide Bio for Jonathan LaMaster • Show Bio for Robin Amos "Robin Amos is an American keyboardist and founding member of the band Cul de Sac. His first band was The Girls, a punk band that Amos founded in the late 1970s with George Condo, Mark Dagley and Daved Hild. He continued to explore that band's sound with his next band Shut Up, which he formed with guitarist Glenn Jones." ^ Hide Bio for Robin Amos • Show Bio for Tony Leva "I am improvisor, collaborator, educator and performer. I can often be found on stages throughout the USA playing songs or accompanying theater and puppetry with: Bury Me Standing, Jaggery, and They Gotta Be Secret Agents. I am also an active collaborator/educator at Tunefoolery, an artist collective of musicians in mental health recovery. I love studying the bass, creating music and collaborating with others while sharing what I learn with students and music lovers of all ages. My own study translates directly to the musicians with whom I play and also to the students whom I teach. As I am able to connect more deeply with my own music, I am able to facilitate others connecting to music. By expanding my own ideas of what music is and how people can play music and create sounds, I can then encourage others to do the same in their own way. I currently teach bass at Rockport Central School and offer private lessons. Please contact me at anthonycolinlevaATgmailDOTcom if you are interested in lessons or if you'd just like to say hello! I also study the sintir (a North African bass lute) and have occasionally performed on trumpet, melodica, accordion and clown nose." ^ Hide Bio for Tony Leva • Show Bio for Michael Knoblach "Michael Knoblach Percussion---Knoblach has played with Ad Frank, Twitcher, Reg Bloor (from Glenn Branca Ensemble), Cul de Sac, John Fahey, Jon LaMaster's Saturnalia, Neovoxer Ensemble, The Boston Village Gamelan, Kiniwe African Percussion Ensemble, Donald "the junkman" Knaack (ex-John Cage), The Calypso Invaders, The Valhalla Kittens, Emily Grogan, Ted Drozdowski's The Scissormen, The Trojan Ponies, Ken Lovelett, John Amaral, Tim Mungenast, Bill T. Miller and others. He played the New Year's Countdown in Copley Square for Boston, MA for a number of years. He has done soundtrack work for the Troma Films release "Terror Firmer." Michael has had extensive studies in Arabic hand drumming and classical Egyptian tambourine, as well as having studied tabla and North Indian classical music with Ali Akbar Khan and Swapan Chaudhuri. He studied drum set with Gene Piccolo (ex-Jack McDuff, ex-Woody Herman, ex-Glenn Miller Band and Piccolo was a long time student of Ed Thigpen (Oscar Peterson Trio, more...) and Shelly Manne (Stan Kenton, more...)). He is currently playing percussion with Dahlman & Nugent in the band Auddity and is playing washboard and old timey percussion with banjo/fiddle player Nicholas Bogosian, as well as other projects." ^ Hide Bio for Michael Knoblach
12/3/2024
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Track Listing:
1. Bailiwick 1:09:26
2. Sphere of Operations 5:27
Improvised Music
Free Improvisation
Electro-Acoustic
Electro-Acoustic Improv
Collective & Free Improvsation
Boston Area Improvisers
Sextet Recordings
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