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Axioms (PEK / SpokenWord / Lomon / onBass / Simches): Illusion and Reality (Evil Clown)

Two vocalists associated with Cecil Taylor's final trio--Albey onBass and Jane SpokenWord--join Evil Clown leader David Peck (PEK) on reeds, winds and a large collection of percussive devices, and Glynis Lomon on cello & aquasonic, for an extended work of critical poetry and spoken word, merging truth and abstraction through free improv and pointed expression.
 

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Personnel:



Jane SpokenWord-poetry, spoken word, Englephone

David Peck (PEK)-clarinet, contralto & contrabass clarinets, sopranino, alto, & tenor saxophones, piccolo oboe, tarota, daxophone, [d]ronin, spring & chime boxes, electric chimes, chimes, gongs, orchestral chimes, brontosaurus & tank bells, plate gong, Tibetan bells & bowls, almglocken, crotales, glockenspiel, cow bells, log drums, wood blocks, temple blocks. balafon, xylophone, aquasonic, spoken word

Glynis Lomon-cello, aquasonic, voice

Albey onBass-electric upright bass, brontosaurus bell, spoken word

Joel Simches-live to 2 track recording


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Label: Evil Clown
Catalog ID: 9295
Squidco Product Code: 33158

Format: CDR
Condition: New
Released: 2022
Country: USA
Packaging: Digipack
Recorded at Evil Clown Headquarters, Waltham MA - January 20, 2022.

Descriptions, Reviews, &c.

"Albey onBass and Jane SpokenWord were associated with Cecil Taylor's final trio. Following Cecil's passing they were in Boston for about a year in 2017-2018 and Albey performed a dozen or so times with Leap of Faith, Metal Chaos Ensemble and Turbulence. In November 2018, Albey and I had been discussing doing a duet, but we decided to include Jane's poetry as a trio. This new Evil Clown Ensemble we called Axioms, which to me is an apt name for a band which features words - something that most Evil Clown sessions do not

There are two definitions:
1) a statement or proposition that is regarded as being established, accepted, or self-evidently true
2) a statement or proposition on which an abstractly defined structure is based (mathematics)
These two meanings bridge the distance between poetic discussion of truths and abstract musical structures

A few months later, about a year before the virus, Albey and Jane moved to New Orleans, so the original session from December 2018, Manifestations, had been our only recording to date

Back in July 2021, soon after I reopened Evil Clown Headquarters for YouTube streaming performances / recordings (following the time when musicians could be fully vaccinated for the virus), Albey reached out saying that he and Jane would be in the Boston area for a few weeks, and we recorded Hypotheses a few days later. In the fall, they moved back to the Boston Area, and Illusions and Reality is the third session since last July

This new set, Illusions and Reality, has a new slightly smaller lineup with the Jane/Albey duet and the PEK/Glynis Lomon duet. An interesting dynamic arises when small subgroups with deep history play together in a larger unit. Jane and Albey have been married for 50 years and they are deeply connected as an improvisation duet with Albey playing bass and Jane reciting her poetry. PEK and Glynis have played together in Leap of Faith and other ensembles since the early 90s. The duets combined interact as two duets as well as the quartet members interacting individually

An early core Leap of Faith core unit was PEK and Glynis with bassist Craig Schildhauer. This version of Leap of Faith was around for 3 or 4 years in the mid-90s. While doing this performance I kept thinking back to this Leap of Faith configuration from nearly 30 years ago. Had that trio done a set with an excellent poet such as Jane, we would have a much earlier document of a two string players / one horn player ensemble with a guest poet

IMHO this is the strongest Axioms set so far... the interplay between Glynis and Albey is getting telepathic... the instrumental support for Jane's words is outstanding... Hopefully, the scheduling will allow frequent repetition of this quartet Axioms ensemble. I like this performance and I think you will too..."-David Peck, from the liner notes


Artist Biographies

"A poet of the street Jane SpokenWord's performances represent the spoken word as it is meant to be experienced, raw, uncensored and thought provoking. She believes that Words have Power. Her words speak to humanity, spirituality, soulfulness, ancestors, the yin of crying out against injustice and cruelty, and the yang of assimilating stardust and moonbeams and nature's beauty and the wisdom of the elders.

Committed to shine

To Black Lives Matter

To Standing Rock

To Dreamers

To Youth on the march

To Women on the move

To inspire tribal resolution

Where I and he and she and me

and the rest of yous including you and us become

'We'

She yields her pen like a warriors sword to inspire change. From solos, to slams, duo's, trios, and bands, she brings her poetry and spoken word to a diverse set of venues including museums, festivals, libraries, slam lounges, art galleries, clubs, busking street corners and living rooms everywhere.

Her notable performances and collaborations include; The Whitney Museum with Avant-Garde Maestro Cecil Taylor (All About Jazz's Best of 2016) Min Tanaka, Nuyorican Poet Miguel Algarin, Beat Poet John Sinclair, her son HipHop musician/producer DJ Nastee, and her partner in all things Albey onBass. To preserve the cultural heritage of wording to document life, and foster a broader collective community she combines the elements of spoken word, music, sound and song."

-Jane SpokenWord Website (https://janespokenword.com/indexJ.html)
11/8/2024

Have a better biography or biography source? Please Contact Us so that we can update this biography.

"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."

-All About Jazz (https://musicians.allaboutjazz.com/pek)
11/8/2024

Have a better biography or biography source? Please Contact Us so that we can update this biography.

"Improvising cellist, vocalist and aquasonic player Glynis Lomon graduated from Bennington College in 1975 with a degree in Music/Black Music. At Bennington she studied with musician/composer Bill Dixon and continued to perform and record with his ensembles until his recent death. Glynis has also been privileged to play with Arthur Brooks, Jimmy Lyons, Cecil Taylor, Butch Morris, William Parker, Joe Morris, Greta Buck, Masashi Harada, Lowell Davidson, Raqib Hassan and many others. For almost a decade she and multi reed player PEK performed in the Boston area with their group Leap of Faith."

-Evil Clown Website (http://www.giantevilclown.com/bio-glynis-lomon-.html)
11/8/2024

Have a better biography or biography source? Please Contact Us so that we can update this biography.

Albey Balgochian performs on bass, who has performed with Cecil Taylor, Paul Rishell and has led his own band.

-Albey onBass Website (http://www.albeybalgochian.com/index.html)
11/8/2024

Have a better biography or biography source? Please Contact Us so that we can update this biography.

"Joel Simches: A multi-instrumentalist born 10/18/65, Joel Simches has been an active member of the Boston music scene for 35 years, played in well over 40 bands, traveling the world as a musician, audio engineer, tour manager and record producer. He has worked with a diverse array of bands including Walter Sickert & the Army of Broken Toys, DeVotchKa, Bang Camaro, Dresden Dolls and Big Dipper, to name a few. He has also written for The Noise and Boston Soundcheck Magazine. Currently a staff engineer at Watch City Studios, Joel also plays in Count Zero, Joe Turner and the Seven Levels, Butterscott, Nisi Period, Didactics, Curious Ritual and is executive producer/talent booker of On The Town with Mikey Dee on WMFO."

-Evil Clown (http://www.giantevilclown.com/bio-joel-simches.html)
11/8/2024

Have a better biography or biography source? Please Contact Us so that we can update this biography.


Track Listing:



1. Illusion and Reality 1:09:45

Related Categories of Interest:


Improvised Music
Free Improvisation
Jazz
Boston Area Improvisers
Spoken Word
Duo Recordings
Quartet Recordings
New in Improvised Music

Search for other titles on the label:
Evil Clown.


Recommended & Related Releases:
Axioms
Extensions To Infinity
(Evil Clown)
Axioms is based around the core trio of Boston multi-reedist, percussionist and composer David Peck, and Cecil Taylor associates Albey onBass (on bass) and poet Jane SpokenWord, here in a performance with collective core cellist & aquasonic performer Glynis Lomon, and guest improviser from New Orleans, Chris Alford on guitar, stomp box and percussion.
Metal Chaos Ensemble
Insanity Is Contagious
(Evil Clown)
Metal Chaos Ensemble was formed in 2015 by reedist & percussionist David Peck and drummer Yuri Zbitnov as a working project to explore chaotic rhythms on metallic instruments with a rock sensibility; drummer Steve Niemitz now holds the drum chair, and the band is a prolific sextet with saxophonist Michael Caglione, trumpeter Bob Moores, synth player Eric Woods and guitarist Mike Gruen.
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An acoustic septet edition of the Leap of Faith, the core duet of David Peck on clarinets, saxophones, double reeds & flutes, and Glynis Lomon on cello, aquasonic & voice, joined by Michael Caglianone on saxophones, flute, clarinet, melodica & water bottle, John Fugarino on trumpet, slide trumpet & flugelhorn, Tom Swafford on violin, Kit Demos on bass, and Eric Rosenthal on drums.
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With two trumpeters--space trumpeter Bob Moores and slide trumpeter John Fugarino — and the exotic guzheng work of Jiaxin Wan — this edition of the Boston Based collective Leap of Faith with David Peck on reeds, winds, synth and percussion and Glynis Lomon on cello and aquasonic, hearkens to their Leap of Faith Chinese Orchestra as the quintet pursues Peck's broad palette improv concept.
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(Evil Clown)
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Simulacrum
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(Evil Clown)
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A larger ensemble for the Boston-area collective Leap of Faith of David Peck on clarinets, saxophones & flutes, and Glynis Lomon on cello, aquasonic & voice, here extended with two horns, three strings, and drums including Cecil Taylor bassist Albey OnBass, plus John Fugarino on trumpets & brass, Tor Snyder on guitar and Eric Rosenthal on drums & percussion.
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Perturbations
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(Evil Clown)
"Perturbed" by the sonic intervention of sound engineer and performer Joel Simches, who applies various effect processes to the continually morphing free improvisations of Boston collective players David Peck on reeds, percussion and synthetics, Michael Caglianone on soprano, alto & tenor saxophones, clarinet, flute & percussion, and Albey onBass on bass and percussion.
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(Evil Clown)
While typically performing and releasing extended improvisations that last an hour or more, before each of the Evil Clown's Livestreamed performances they record a short improvisation, referred to as "Shorties", taking approaches that yield unique character to the longer works, collected here in 15 recordings with permutations of regular collective members.
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