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About Leap of Faith Orchestra
Instrument: Multi-instrumentalist
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by Karl Ackermann
Composer, multi-instrumentalist, bandleader and label founder, PEK is an audacious experimenter. Beyond that, there are no appropriate labels for the music associated with his numerous groups on his Evil Clown label. Listen to the Leap of Faith Orchestra on The Photon Epoch and you will find yourself at thirty-thousand feet, in a place with few identifiable landmarks, and then just trust that PEK will land the plane. Twice each year, the Evil Clown family of groups convenes as ...
read moreLeap of Faith Orchestra: Cosmological Horizons
by Karl Ackermann
David M. Peck's (PEK) Leap of Faith collective is brought together in its largest formation of twenty-four musicians for a marathon performance of the leader's Cosmological Horizons composition. This second of two annual performances of an orchestra culled from the Evil Clown label's various groups (String Theory, Mekaniks, Metal Chaos Ensemble, etc.) was held in Killian Hall on the Boston campus of MIT. As he often does, PEK composes a single, extended piece for the duration of the ...
read moreLeap of Faith Orchestra: SuperClusters
by Karl Ackermann
On two occasions each year, composer and multi-instrumentalist PEK (David M. Peck), gathers together his Evil Clown collective for live recordings. Culled from Leap of Faith, String Theory, Mekaniks, Metal Chaos Ensemble and their respective off-shoots of each, the players form his massive, eighteen-member Leap of Faith Orchestra. For the SuperClusters session, the group assembled at Longy School of Music at Bard College with a specially written score that takes advantage of the individual sub-groups' previous experiences.As LOFO ...
read moreLeap of Faith Orchestra: Supernovae
by Karl Ackermann
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 ...
read moreAn Evil Clown and a Leap of Faith
by Karl Ackermann
"I don't have a half-speed for music, if I do it, I'm all in..."--PEK If the Evil Clown record label is prolific on a per capita basis, then its founder is exponentially more inexhaustible. David Peck (aka PEK) founded the label--at first, unbranded--and its roots date back a little more than twenty years ago to Cambridge, MA. The musicians under the label could best be described as a collaborative collective" and in various formations turn out twenty-five ...
read moreLeap of Faith Orchestra: The Expanding Universe
by Karl Ackermann
The creative music cooperative known as Leap of Faith had a long initial run from 1993 to 2001 and then re-booted in 2015. At their core, from the beginning, have been multi-instrumentalists David Peck (aka PEK) and Glynis Lomon. PEK, however, assumes a more than democratic leadership role across the many manifestations of the collective that live on his Evil Clown label. On The Expanding Universe the Leap of Faith Orchestra--true the album title--escalates with full (but non-conventional) ensemble of ...
read moreLeap of Faith/Thomas Heberer: Solution Concepts
by Karl Ackermann
The twenty year history of Leap of Faith includes an eleven year hiatus that is noteworthy more for the cooperative's ability to seamlessly pick up the pieces than for an uber-extended break. Cellist Glynis Lomon--a one-time student of Bill Dixon--was working the Boston circuit with multi-reedist PEK in the 1990s. The two honed their far reaching technical skills taking them into the Leaping Water Trio, a precursor to Leap of Faith whose 1995 debut included trombonist Mark McGrain and occasional ...
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