The vision of the overall Evil Clown project is to create an extremely broad universe of sound and to realize music which transforms into widely different sonorities within a single performance. The full Leap of Faith Orchestra performing a PEK frame notation score is the most complete implementation of that vision. The large ensemble size and the details provided in the score directing the improvisation allow us to create a story through a huge number of controlled textures over the 75 minute duration of the works.
The small Leap of Faith Orchestra, and the various sub-units (Leap of Faith, Metal Chaos Ensemble, Turbulence, String Theory, New Language Collaborative, Sub-Units and Mekaniks) also perform pure improvisations. These pure improvisations comprise most of the work of the Evil Clown ensembles and tune the player's improvisation languages to each other and the Evil Clown aesthetic (in 2017 we performed two scores, but published a total of 37 new albums)....
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The vision of the overall Evil Clown project is to create an extremely broad universe of sound and to realize music which transforms into widely different sonorities within a single performance. The full Leap of Faith Orchestra performing a PEK frame notation score is the most complete implementation of that vision. The large ensemble size and the details provided in the score directing the improvisation allow us to create a story through a huge number of controlled textures over the 75 minute duration of the works.
The small Leap of Faith Orchestra, and the various sub-units (Leap of Faith, Metal Chaos Ensemble, Turbulence, String Theory, New Language Collaborative, Sub-Units and Mekaniks) also perform pure improvisations. These pure improvisations comprise most of the work of the Evil Clown ensembles and tune the player's improvisation languages to each other and the Evil Clown aesthetic (in 2017 we performed two scores, but published a total of 37 new albums).
This is the sixth frame notation score to be performed since the current project fired up in 2015...
Program Notes for the Concert
Leap of Faith Orchestra Performs The Photon by PEK
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Once or twice a year Sparkles, The Giant Evil Clown, presents the full Leap of Faith Orchestra in its largest configuration performing a Frame Notation Score composed by PEK which guides the improvisation...
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In physical cosmology, The Photon Epoch was the period in the evolution of the early universe in which photons dominated the energy of the universe. The Photon Epoch started after most leptons and anti-leptons were annihilated at the end of the lepton epoch, about 10 seconds after the Big Bang. Atomic nuclei were created in the process of nucleosynthesis which occurred during the first few minutes of The Photon Epoch. For the remainder of The Photon Epoch, the universe contained a hot dense plasma of nuclei, electrons and photons. 370,000 years after the Big Bang the temperature of the universe fell to the point where nuclei could combine with electrons to create neutral atoms. As a result, photons no longer interacted frequently with matter, the universe became transparent and the cosmic microwave background radiation was created and then structure formation took place.
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I am giving all my Frame Notation compositions for the LOFO astronomical/cosmological titles - It seems fitting with the scale of these long complex works and fits well with my usual Leap of Faith/Evil Clown titles which largely draw on Scientific and Mathematical ideas. These very special full orchestra events occur only once or twice a year. For each performance, I compose a Frame Notation Score specifically for that show which is simultaneously a Density and Sonority map prescribing the improvised development of the work. These very special scores intend to solve a very tricky problem of composition for large improvisation ensembles: How do you rehearse complex works for large ensembles when all the participants are extremely busy? Answer: Compose works that do not need to be rehearsed.
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My newest composition, The Photon Epoch, is being presented in a great room at The Longy School of Music called Pickman Hall. Pickman Hall is a wonderful modern chamber orchestra performance space with high ceilings, a great grand piano and a nice live sound. The Leap of Faith Orchestra performed Superclusters, my 4th Frame Notation Score, at Pickman Hall in December 2017. Peter Cassino, who plays with our star cellist Glynis Lomon, and who performed the piano part on the 1st Frame Notation Score, The Expanding Universe, has generously offered us the use of this amazing venue. Thanks, Peter…
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When deciding that I wanted to create a large improvisation orchestra version of Leap of Faith in early 2015, I reflected on my prior experience with large groups in the 90s and early 00s where we tried with difficulty to gather the entire group to rehearse. I decided to take a different approach and to develop the orchestra slowly over time by working with many smaller sections and combinations ultimately leading to the full unit. For the first year and a half, we performed pure improvisations with each other in various combinations, and created a lot of great work by smaller units in the process. The debut performance of the first Frame Notation Score by PEK, The Expanding Universe, was performed by the full Leap of Faith Orchestra in June 2016 - then 4 more since: Supernovae (November 2016); Possible Universes (May 2017), SuperClusters (December 2017), and Cosmological Horizons (July 2018): All to critical acclaim. See reviews on AllAboutJazz.com, FreeJazzBlog, the New York City Jazz Record and elsewhere (Evil Clown website press page). The various small ensembles continue regularly to present pure improvisations at Boston Venues and now LIVE STREAMING of recording sessions from Evil Clown Headquarters.
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The Frames control who plays what instrument and at what times during the 75 minute duration of the composition. The score does not contain conventionally notated melodic, harmonic or rhythmic information; instead, the Frames, aligned with Time Indices along the top of the page, contain simple graphic symbols and English language descriptions for each performer dictating the instrument played and texture desired for the Frame’s Time Window specified by its Duration Bar. The score prescribes timbre sets (clouds of sounds of similar texture) by assigning auxiliary instruments (mostly wood or metal percussion) to each player and using the many possible permutations of primary and auxiliary instrument groupings across the orchestra to create an organic stream of transformations through highly varied sonorities. The ensemble tracks the time on the score with a large digital sports clock.
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This system allows me to compose detailed Events without having to notate pitches or rhythms in conventional staff notation which would require significant rehearsal to accurately achieve and not take advantage of the distinct improvisational languages of the musicians. Skilled improvisers, like the ones I have recruited, can easily follow these instructions to create a highly structured improvisation without the need for rehearsal even when the ensemble is quite large as it is here. This allows enormous freedom and decision making for each performer and means that we do not have to rehearse these pieces prior to performance. We rely on all of the work of the overall Evil Clown project to tighten the ensembles' improvisation across its many cross sections while the score provides directions on timing, sonority and transformation.
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Each of the scores has continued to utilize the compositional symbols and devices of the previous scores while adding something new to my notational system. Some examples of recurrent devices are large texture blocks with auxiliary instrument groupings (like wood or metal texture), pulse tracks with unison attacks at irregular intervals from different sub-groups, using the decay from large gongs as structural divisions of the work to pivot into a new sonority, and Group Action Frames assigned to named sub-groups in the ensemble.
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For the last three scores I have used different time scales for different sections of the work on the page timeline (1, 3 and 5 minute page widths), each of which allows the Events to lay differently on the page. Short detailed Events are easier to notate and interpret when the page is a one minute wide and longer, more general Events easier to notate and interpret when the page is five minutes wide. For The Photon Epoch, all of the page scales trigger Frames at the 1 second interval (i.e. 12:27), as opposed to a 5 second interval (i.e. 12:25) of the earliest score. I use spreadsheets with random number functions to generate time structures at several scales which are used in planning the Events. These structures are in use in nearly every section of the work, and the 1 second interval is required at every page scale to represent these structures.
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Most of the musicians have performed several of or all the earlier scores, so they have learned how to interpret the basic Group Action Frame symbols and the other notational devices. I have increased the rate of and the number of transformations in each score and new Group Action Frames are added to my compositional vocabulary for the next one. I have learned how the notation is interpreted by the ensemble and that, in fact, they can interpret detailed directions successfully even without rehearsal. With a much larger well-defined universe of notation and a knowledgeable pool of performers each of the scores has become significantly more sophisticated than its predecessors. The audience will experience a steady flow of distinct sonorities over the duration of the performance.
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All the other contemporaneous Evil Clown performances and recordings by all the ensembles - Leap of Faith, String Theory, Mekaniks, Metal Chaos Ensemble and the Sub-Units - are preparation for these full Leap of Faith Orchestra performances. The performances by these smaller ensembles stand by themselves as improvisation performances as well as getting us ready to improvise in a full orchestra setting. Please look for our regular concerts at Outpost 186 and Third Life Studios. Sign up for the mailing list at the Merch Table or send me email at [email protected]!! - PEK, 3/10/2019
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