Review by Bruce Lee Gallanter, Downtown Music Gallery
LEAP OF FAITH with PEK / GLYNIS LOMON / KAT DOBBINS / BOB MOORES / YURI ZBITNOV - Sense and Understanding (Evil Clown 9237; USA) Personnel: PEK - clarinets, saxes, taragato, English horn, flute, melodica & percussion; Glynis Lomon (2nd piece only) on cello, aquasonic & voice; Kat Dobbins on trombone, stomping & clapping; Bob Moores on trumpet, game calls & wood flute and Yuri Zbitnov on drums & percussion. Although the core members remain the same: Pek, Ms. Lomon & Mr. Zbitnov, this version includes Bob Moores, whose been around for a bit and newest member Kat Dobbins. This session was recorded at Outpost 186 in Cambridge, MA in December of 2019 and consists of two pieces, 19 & 51 minutes. As is often the case, things start off slowly with just a couple of instruments at a time: melodica, percussion and trombone. While Zbitnov plays a slow, skeletal groove, the trombone, trumpet and low-end clarinet circle slowly above. Each member gets a chance to stretch out and slowly add to the ongoing organic improv flow. Yuri Zbitnov, who will be retiring from Leap of Faith shortly is in strong form here, whipping up a storm but not overdoing it too much. “Understanding” is the longer piece here with Ms. Lomon joining the entourage. As is often the case, the quintet rise from the ashes of silence adding their voices one or two at a time and building, combining forces as they go. While Mr. Zbitnov again starts escalating the rhythmic from below, the brass and reeds ascend slowly with him, buzzing, simmering and building to the next level. Again, it is Mr. Zbitnov’s ever-engaging drumming that sets the pace here while both brass, reeds and cello interweave around him, rising and falling in organic waves. An outstanding effort from a series of ensembles that now passed the 100 mark for released discs!
- Bruce Lee Gallanter, DMG
Catherine Hammond photos
Review Excerpt by Bruce Lee Gallanter,
Downtown Music Gallery
“… As is often the case, the quintet rise from the ashes of silence adding their voices one or two at a time and building, combining forces as they go. While Mr. Zbitnov again starts escalating the rhythmic from below, the brass and reeds ascend slowly with him, buzzing, simmering and building to the next level. Again, it is Mr. Zbitnov’s ever-engaging drumming that sets the pace here while both brass, reeds and cello interweave around him, rising and falling in organic waves. An outstanding effort from a series of ensembles that now passed the 100 mark for released discs!”
Liner Notes Excerpt by PEK (Full Notes Below)
"...I had the idea for this quintet based on the interactions between Bob and Kat at the Probability Clouds show by Leap of Faith Orchestra & Sub-Units. I scheduled our July show at Outpost 186 for this quintet, but that day was blazing hot, nearly 100 degrees and humid. Although I hated to do it, I canceled the performance. Luckily, we were able to make up the show later that week at Evil Clown Headquarters, and now finally a public performance....." Two excursive works from the Boston improvising collective Leap of Faith, with the core trio of PEK on clarinets, saxophones, double reeds & flutes, Glynis Lomon on cello, aquasonic & voice, and Yuri Zbitnov on drums & percussion, plus guests Kat Dobbins on trombone and Bob Moores on trumpets, creating a highly interactive environment performing PEK's framework compositions.
Squidco Blurb
Two excursive works from the Boston improvising collective Leap of Faith, with the core trio of PEK on clarinets, saxophones, double reeds & flutes, Glynis Lomon on cello, aquasonic & voice, and Yuri Zbitnov on drums & percussion, plus guests Kat Dobbins on trombone and Bob Moores on trumpets, creating a highly interactive environment performing PEK's framework compositions.
photo by Catherine Hammond
PEK tweak of a Catherine Hammond photo
Composer and multi-instrumentalist, PEK, set his sights on something bigger with the Leap of Faith Orchestra's Supernovae. The previous incarnation of the LOFO expands from the fifteen musicians on The Expanding Universe (Evil Clown, 2016) to twenty-one players on this new outing. Another noteworthy element of this project is PEK's use of Frame Notation where the score is seen in written descriptions and straight-forward symbols within Duration Bars. The system provides the musicians with immediate understanding of their own parts and the higher-level arrangement of the music.
Supernovae consists of a single track composition running just under eighty minutes. The digital download includes a bonus track. Though the extended piece is not broken out by formal movements, there are clear delineations within the score. PEK's ensemble—not surprisingly—includes enough non-traditional and weird instruments to compete with a Dr. Seuss orchestra. Though they are not playing in a vacuum, that group of instruments dominates the first ten minutes before strings and reeds make themselves more clearly heard. Forty-five minutes in, we have the first case of prolonged melody, darker and more subdued than the overall tone of the first half.
Supernovae gives way to free improvisation overlaying the melody. Eventually the piece introduces a brilliant percussion passage before it reintroduces the non-traditional music elements, but here in a more refined manner. As with all of PEK's compositions, there is—behind the scenes—a painstaking amount of organization that is not always evident in the listening. That is part of the beauty of this album; the non-traditional approach to instrumentation and the lack of adherence to Western structure continue to make the various iterations of Leap of Faith consistently interesting. And interesting look at the written score can be viewed at http://www.evilclown.rocks/lofo-supernovae-score.html.
On Metal Chaos Ensemble: "... using unique strategies to yield densely active and eerily surreal music, an incredible excursion through experimental improvisation." - Squidco website staff
Other Leap of Faith Sets with Kat and Bobo
Leap of Faith - Cosmic Distance Ladder
Evil Clown album page YouTube bandcamp
Leap of Faith Orchestra & Sub-Units- Probability Clouds
Evil Clown album page YouTube1 YT2 YT3 YT4 YT5 bandcamp
Leap of Faith Orchestra - Possible Universes
Leap of Faith - Sense and Understanding
Outpost 186, Cambridge MA - 14 December 2019
On Leap of Faith: "Alien yet familiar, bizarre yet completely fascinating. Expanding, contracting, erupting, settling down, always as one force..." - Bruce Lee Gallanter, DMG
Liner Notes by PEK
Leap of Faith is the core trio of the Leap of Faith Orchestra (LOFO) comprised of PEK on clarinets, saxophones, double reeds & 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.
One of the common variations of Leap of Faith is a 3-horn quintet with the core unit plus two guest horn players. There are maybe about fifteen albums with this general format.
A new variation of this ensemble features trombonist Kat Dobbins who has performed on about half a dozen Evil Clown sessions from the LOFO performances of PEK Frame Notation Scores, Turbulence, and the LOFO & Sub-Units shows at Third Life Studio. She has a great sound and improvisational sensibility which are very welcome at Evil Clown whenever she can make time for us in her hectic schedule…
The second added horn is Evil Clown regular Bob Moores on trumpet, pic trumpet, and flugelhorn. Bob also plays the percussion instruments strewn throughout the studio.
I had the idea for this quintet based on the interactions between Bob and Kat at the Probability Clouds show by Leap of Faith Orchestra & Sub-Units. I scheduled our July show at Outpost 186 for this quintet, but that day was blazing hot, nearly 100 degrees and humid. Although I hated to do it, I canceled the performance. Luckily, we were able to make up the show later that week at Evil Clown Headquarters, and now finally a public performance.
We’re doing LIVE STREAMING now for recording sessions at ECH, and the make-up performance for the canceled show marks the debut of the new wall mounted cameras, which provide a much better camera angle and better lighting… For this show we used 7 cameras all fed to Raffi at the video mixer: Live mixed to YouTube!
Subscribe to https://www.youtube.com/channel/UClfRlTeeHnSxRsJTkFakiJw/videos for notifications on future LIVE STREAMING events.
As I expected, this quintet comprised of the three horns of PEK, Bob and Kat, with the cello of Glynis and the percussion from Yuri, played a great set to YouTube and now another one at this public performance in December.
Subscribe to https://www.youtube.com/channel/UClfRlTeeHnSxRsJTkFakiJw/videos for notifications on future LIVE STREAMING events.
PEK – 12/17/2019
Evil Clown
2
Audio CD Evil Clown 9237
Leap of Faith - Sense and Understanding
bandcamp
streaming, downloads and CD mail Order
Squidco CD mail order
1. Sense - 18:56
2. Understanding - 50:53
Outpost 186, Cambridge MA
21 September 2019
PEK (1,2) - clarinet & contralto clarinet, alto, tenor & bass saxophones, tarota, English horn, sheng, contrabassoon,wood flute, melodica, game calls, Tibetan bowls, bells, wood blocks, rachet, gong, voice
Kat Dobbins (1,2) - trombone, rubber band, stomping, clapping, voice
Bob Moores (1,2) - trumpet, game calls, wood flute
Glynis Lomon - cello, aquasonic, voice
Yuri Zbitnov - drums, Tibetan bowls, wood blocks, Paiste gong, metal, wood, voice