Evil Clown: Leap of Faith 3

Evil Clown

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2015 in review...

I wrote a detailed newsletter recapping 2015 for all of the Evil Clown bands. Check it out here.

1993-2001; 2015 to present

Streaming, Downloads and CD Orders

Recording Summary

Leap of Faith 1 2 3 4

Photos by Raffi

Looking Forward

My plan is to rent this space and use this format roughly every 2 months or so. For the next concert (in June) we did a Original Leap of Faith / Current Leap of Faith show with David Harris for Mark McGrain on low brass and Sid Smart on drums as the Original LOF.

Review by freejazzblog

This concert was well recorded and I put it out on bandcamp as a two volume disc entitled Abstract Structures. Paul Acquaro referred me to a colleague from the freejazzblog, Stefan Wood, who wrote a very nice review here.

We then had several sessions which we recorded and released on the bandcamp page (Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica, Superalloys), followed by our first performance at the Lily Pad in May 2015. I have established a format for our concerts there which we used to use at the Zeitgeist Gallery back in the day. We have two ensembles play 3 sets - one set each and then one set together. For this concert we had Glynis' regular working band for the last decade or so, New Language Collaborative, with pianist Eric Zinman and drummer Yedidyah Sid Smart. Keith Martin kindly drove up from New York and video taped the show and then he and Kevin Reilly posted it on Kevin's YouTu.be page where it has been viewed over 300 times already.

I wrote the previous pages of Leap of Faith backstory over Christmas in California before we had our first session. Shortly after returning to Boston following my Xmas vacation we recorded "Regenerations" at Yuri's Haus. I put the new track together with outakes from the Linear Transformations & Combinations Sessions well recorded at MIT in 1996. Kevin Reilly had introduced me to Paul Acquaro, a blogger for freejazzblog, who wrote a great review here. We also had an interview conducted through email where I wrote for the first time about the theory of improvisation used by Leap of Faith and myself.

Recording Summary

Streaming, Downloads and CD Orders

1993-2001; 2015 to present

Review by freejazzblog

My inactive period lasted over 10 years, so getting back into playing after such a long break has given me the opportunity to reinvent Leap of Faith. I decided to broaden our palette of sounds significantly - by adding Steve Norton as a second woodwind player, by more than doubling the number of orchestral horns that I use to 18, and by adding the metal percussion arsenal also used by Metal Chaos Ensemble.

Leap of Faith is all about transformation of sonority over time; we make complex textures that evolve and morph into other complex textures, the succession of changes over the length of the improvisation tell a story. Having a very broad instrumental palette allows us to make these successive sonorities very different in texture.

Steve Norton also uses many woodwind instruments - he has 8 clarinets and saxophones. Many permutations of instrument selection are available to Steve and myself (same, or different register; same, or different family of instruments; exactly the same instrument, and others). Glynis uses aquasonic and voice in addition to the cello and we all use metal, aquasonics and small instruments in addition to our primary instruments. This new Leap of Faith has a much broader scope of sonority than our earlier incarnations where we used fewer instruments and where the core unit was trio instead of quartet.

I have started to work on building a large version of the band, the Leap of Faith Orchestra, comprised of the core quartet of Leap of Faith + Metal Chaos Ensemble for an expanded percussion section + a horn section expanded to 5 or 6 players + an expanded string section + others. Upcoming shows will develop portions of this larger ensemble individually. Over the next year or so, I will use different variations of subsets of the orchestra as the guest band in the - Guest, then LOF, then Guest+LOF - concert format. I have set our schedule over the remainder of the year to explore a number of the possible orchestra members and instrumental combinations.

Upcoming Gigs on the book at the moment:

Lily Pad , Cambridge - 4 August 2015: LOF + Guest Jim Hobbs (as) and Daniel Levin (cello)
Revolutionary Arts, Brooklyn NY - 15 August 2015: LOF + Shoshke Rayzl (guitar)
Downtown Music Gallery, Manhattan NY - 16 August 2015: Stripped-down LOF
Clarendon Hill Presbyterian Church, Somerville MA - 9 September 2015 - LOF + Metal Chaos Ensemble
Lily Pad , Cambridge - 27 October 2015: LOF + Turbulence, the expanded horn section with PEK, Steve Norton, Steve Hedger (tp), Bill Lowe (tu, tb), David Harris (tu, tb)
Lily Pad , Cambridge - Late Nov or Dec 2015: LOF + expanded string section TBD.

PEK, 15 July 2015

Regenerations

Photos by Raffi

July 2015 Update

View or Download the Evil Clown Catalog on pdf

On Leap of Faith: "Alien yet familiar, bizarre yet completely fascinating. Expanding, contracting, erupting, settling down, always as one force..." - Bruce Lee Gallanter, DMG

On Metal Chaos Ensemble: "... using unique strategies to yield densely active and eerily surreal music, an incredible excursion through experimental improvisation." - Squidco website staff

Evil Clown Available at Squidco!!