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Peter Lutek

My name is Peter Lutek; I am a musician in Toronto, Canada. Most of my performing lately is as a reed instrumentalist specializing in improvised music. I frequently use electronics in performance, as a way to extend and modify acoustic sounds. You can find me playing with Tom Richards' Riverrun, the Avi Granite:6, and Shahab Bradaran's Circle Band. Besides performing, I'm active as a sound engineer. I was session engineer, editor, and mixer for all of the recordings of the 40 Fingers saxophone quartet. I've also made a number of recordings over the last 20 years with David Mott, Joseph Petric, and Tom Richards. I was delighted to mix and master the critically acclaimed debut recording by Rob Mosher's Storytime, entitled The Tortoise. For many years, I studied classical bassoon performance, including some time at the University of Toronto and the Banff Centre. Since then I've also been playing clarinets and saxophones, composing, and exploring electronic sound design. Over the years, I've been involved with New Music Concerts (Toronto), NUMUS (Waterloo), the Art of Time Ensemble, David Buchbinder, Andrew Downing, David Occhipinti, and the Freddie Stone Ensemble. Two ensembles which have been major parts of my life are the 40 Fingers saxophone quartet and the Toronto-based collective, Composers Workshop. More recently, I led my own quintet, ENGINE.


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4
Album Review

Avi Granite 6: Operator

Read "Operator" reviewed by Dan McClenaghan


Guitarist Avi Granite--in the company of his brash band Avi Granite 6--opens his Operator with “Crushing Beans," displaying a big bad attitude. The drums are explosive, the horns belt it out, the bass shakes the walls and Granite slashes and burns. The first impression is: “This must be a great live band." And indeed, the studio appointment to record Operator came when the group was fresh from a tour. They brought the bandstand energy with them. “Voracious" is ...

Album Review

Lara Solnicki: The One And The Other

Read "The One And The Other" reviewed by Alberto Bazzurro


Questo è il terzo album, dopo Whose Shadow?, del 2014, e A Meadow in December del 2011, a nome della cantante canadese (di Toronto) Lara Solnicki, presenza tutto sommato piuttosto anomala nel variegato panorama delle jazz singers per svariati motivi, che cerchiamo di sintetizzare. Anzitutto lei canta e dice (si definisce cantante-compositrice-poetessa), ma non su un terreno contemporaneo-aleatorio-concreto, come si potrebbe immaginare, bensì lungo brani perfettamente predefiniti, per attraversare i quali si affida alle cure di gruppi numerosi (ieri un ...

3
Album Review

Lara Solnicki: The One And The Other

Read "The One And The Other" reviewed by Jerome Wilson


Lara Solnicki is a Canadian poet, composer and singer who combines all her talents strikingly on this album, marrying her words to a dense fabric of free-flowing jazz and improvisation. Solnicki bends her voice well to the requirements of each composition. On the singsong rhythm of “The Embrace," she sounds sensitive but slightly detached against falling piano and electronic whispers, while, on the cinematic construction of “Bit Her Sweet Christopher Street," her voice climbs through a busy tangle ...

3
Album Review

Lara Solnicki: The One And The Other

Read "The One And The Other" reviewed by C. Michael Bailey


Among feelings are nervousness and anxiety. While synonymous in any thesaurus, the two words differ in the same way that thankfulness and gratitude differ, that is, in focus. Nervousness and thankfulness often have no focus, no definite object creating them. Anxiety and gratitude are those feelings, those reactions to the specific. Something clearly gives rise to them. With regards to anxiety and disquiet, Canadian vocalist and composer Lara Solnicki uses “free jazz" and poetry as the stimulus for generating a ...

29
Album Review

Mark Segger: Lift Off

Read "Lift Off" reviewed by Glenn Astarita


This Canadian band throws almost everything imaginable at the studio walls in synchronous fashion. And while the album may be classified as an EP, due to its 29-minute length, quality is the underlying factor throughout. Based out of Edmonton, Segger started this band via its first album, The Beginning (18th Note Records, 2011). Nine-years later, the sextet extends its resume with this high-impact and compelling release, brimming with gobs of counterpoint, sizzling free-form detours and complex modal narratives.

5
Album Review

Mark Segger Sextet: Lift Off

Read "Lift Off" reviewed by Dan Bilawsky


Fracas and focus are not mutually exclusive concepts. In purely linguistic terms, invoking the label “avant-garde" when addressing sound often calls to mind a melee-as-music scenario. The audible truth, however, is something else entirely. An artist's work can lean far to the left without falling off the comprehensibility scale, and drummer Mark Segger makes that argument with brevity and brio. With twelve years of existence binding concepts and compadres, Segger's sextet operates like a well-oiled, though highly irregular ...

Album Review

Michael Vlatkovich 5 Winds: Five of Us

Read "Five of Us" reviewed by Alberto Bazzurro


Ensemble (nello specifico quintetto) di soli fiati (non solo ance ma anche ottoni), come una volta era praticamente inaudito, dopo di che ci si sono misurati in diversi, e in tempi recenti quasi più nessuno: questa è la formazione a cui si rivolge il vulcanico trombonista losangelino Michael Vlatkovich per questo suo nuovo lavoro, peraltro inciso (a Toronto) nell'abbastanza lontano 2015. Vi trova posto una musica curata, parecchio scritta ma non per questo priva di singoli apporti in grado di ...

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“...the stand-out performance for me was from Peter Lutek on clarinet. The range and dexterity of his playing, as well as its idiomatic authenticity, was truly thrilling and his every entry raised the intensity of the tune in play.” Tova G. Kardonne; The Live Music Report, February, 2008 “...Peter Lutek’s keening, desolate sax blowing over a shimmering wash of guitar loops, electric keys, and electronic percussion.” Paul Olson; All About Jazz, January 1, 2006 “...soprano saxophonist Perter Lutek delivers a fierce, over-the-top solo that is one of the highlights of the album.” Ken Kase; All About Jazz, October 11, 2006 “Calm and precise, he executes, and sometimes tears the ground out from under our feet.” David Fujino; The Live Music Report, September, 2005 “...the hyper-rockin’ Peter Lutek...” Stanley Fefferman; The Live Music Report, February, 2005

Photos

Music

Recordings: As Leader | As Sideperson

Operator

Pet Mantis Records
2023

buy

The One And The Other

Outside in Music
2021

buy

Lift Off

Self Produced
2020

buy

Five of Us

pfMentum
2019

buy

ENGINE: START

Unknown label
2011

buy

My Sunken Ship

From: Operator
By Peter Lutek

Idee Fixe

From: The One And The Other
By Peter Lutek

Lift Off

From: Lift Off
By Peter Lutek

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