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Leap Of Faith

Topological Constructions

Leap Of Faith: Topological Constructions (Evil Clown)

The core trio of the Leap of Faith Orchestra--PEK on clarinets, saxophones, clarinets & flutes, Glynis Lomon on cello, aquasonic & voice, and Yuri Zbitnov on drums & percussion--is joined by fellow Orchestra violinist Mimi Rabson and special guest, violinist Elinor Speirs, for a remarkable improvised work using a huge arsenal of instruments including a new Brontosaurus Bell.
 

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David Peck (PEK)-clarinet, Contraalto clarinet, sopranino, bamboo soprano, alto, tenor saxophone, bass saxophones, contrabasson, English horn, tarota, sheng, log drums, balafon, aquasonic, [d]Ronin, wood, metal, brontosaurus bell, orchestral chimes, voice

Glynis Lomon-cello, aquasonic, voice

Mimi Rabson-violin, metal, wood, aquasonic

Elinor Speirs-violin

Yuri Zbitnoff-drums, talking drum, wood, metal, brontosaurus bell, [d]Ronin, daxophone, aquasonic, orchestral chimes


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Label: Evil Clown
Catalog ID: 9183
Squidco Product Code: 26544

Format: CD
Condition: New
Released: 2018
Country: USA
Packaging: Digipack
Recorded at Evil Clown Headquarters, in Waltham, Massachusetts, on June 21st, 2018.

Descriptions, Reviews, &c.

"Leap of Faith is the core trio of the Leap of Faith Orchestra (LOFO) comprised of PEK on clarinets, saxophones, clarinets & flutes, Glynis Lomon on cello, aquasonic & voice, and Yuri Zbitnov on drums & percussion. The ensemble is based in Boston and dates back to the early 90s. We utilize a huge arsenal of additional Evil Clown instruments to improvise long works featuring transformations across highly varied sonorities. The ensemble has always been highly modular and our many recordings feature the core trio in dozens of configurations with a huge list of guests.

Mimi Rabson is our star violinist from the Leap of Faith Orchestra. She is a brilliant and highly in demand player who also teaches at Berklee. We love playing with Mimi and have her play with us as often as we can. In order to keep momentum that comes from regular sessions in small improvisation units, Glynis, Yuri and myself work around MimiÕs availability to schedule as many Evil Clown Headquarters sessions as we can. To date, we have recorded 3 prior excellent sessions at ECH in addition to Topological Constructions: Semantic Differentials (April 2018), ZenoÕs Paradox (September 2017) and Thought Experiment (November 2017).

Violinist Elinor Speirs is our special guest for Topological Constructions. She is working on a DMA at New England Conservatory, like our regular LOFO member Dan OÕBrien. I contacted her hoping she could be in the string section for the performance of my work for improvisation orchestra, Cosmological Horizons, next month at Killian Hall MIT. Unfortunately, she canÕt make CH, so we decided to get her together with this small Strings variation of Leap of Faith at Evil Clown Headquarters. Glynis, Mimi and Elinor were a spectacular string section indeed!! Hopefully weÕll see more of Elinor in the futureÉ

Worthy of note is the newest arsenal acquisition, the Brontosaurus Bell, which is making its Leap of Faith premiere on this recording. This is an extraordinarily large (32 inches) cow bell which someone welded together and hung from a huge heavy stand. No cows are big enough for this bell, so IÕm calling it the Brontosaurus Bell. Turns out this instrument has lots of different amazing sounds depending on where, with what, and how hard you strike it!! It has sounds like from a thunder sheet or rapidly decaying gong. A perfect complement to the already huge set of metal percussion instrumentsÉ.

One special thing about the ECH sessions is the ready availability of all of the instruments in the Evil Clown Arsenal. The studio is pretty big, but there is not enough room for the entire Arsenal, so we select auxiliary instruments until the room is full. The available sound palette is the biggest we customarily use except for full Orchestra shows at larger venues (when we move it all with a truck)."-PEK, 23 June 2018



This album has been reviewed on our magazine:

The Squid
The Squid's Ear!

Artist Biographies

"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)