Leap of Faith Orchestra, The Expanding Universe

Boston is PEK country. The avant reedman-composer is on a mission up there: to turn the world onto free improv music, free jazz. He's been recording prolifically lately with a number of his ensembles. The Leap of Faith Orchestra is no doubt his most ambitious project and can be heard to very good advantage on their album The Expanding Universe (Evil Clown 9110).

The release gives us one very long and rather exciting work for the full ensemble, which at that point consisted of 15 members, including Yedidyah Sid Smart on drums, Charlie Kohlhase on saxes, Glynis Lomon on cello. aquasonic and voice, in addition to reeds, trumpet, vibes, two more drummers, two basses, two violins, trombone-tuba, and piano.

This is a bracing collage of ever-varying sound color universes and at times they kick up a hell of a fuss! Other times they are a bit more focused within.

But all told you are in for a wildly free trip into the nether worlds of the universe. Nice one!

Thomas Heberer, Leap of Faith, Solution Concepts

Reed jazzman PEK has been quite prolific making avant jazz happen up in Boston with his two ensembles. Today we hear a CD of characteristically interesting music played by his Leap of Faith outfit with guest Thomas Heberer, Solution Concepts (Evil Clown 9076).

It is a full set recorded live at New York's Downtown Music Gallery last August. The outer numbers are long improv tracks with Heberer on cornet for the latter, plus PEK on tenor, piccolo oboe, clarinet and contra-alto clarinet. Glynis Lomon is on cello and aquisonic, Steve Norton on sopranino, alto clarinet, and alto sax. And Yuri Zbitnov is at the drums with resonant metal objects adding to the sound.

This is full-blown free outness in the grand tradition, spontaneous outbursts of individual and collectively free sound with all playing and hearing one another to create shifting constellations of aural expression. Thomas Heberer enters following the first long improv for a series of unaccompanied solos. Thomas shows us his smartly expressive way in a kind of tour de force of melodic invention.

The final number is a twenty-minute conflagration of Heberer and Leap of Faith joined together. It gives the entire ensemble space to open up worlds of improv and at the same time gives space as well for Heberer's voice to respond to the others and vice versa. The track has a great deal of strength and shows the complete complement of artists at their best.

All in the end is worthy ear fare. It is a fine example of Leap of Faith in its current guise and Thomas Heberer in an inspired frame of being, both with and without the ensemble.

Recommended!

Leap of Faith, Regenerations

Leap of Faith is the name of a collective free improv outfit operating out of New England. Regenerations (Evil Clown 9036) features two substantial free-form excursions that capture the collective in two incarnations. Throughout PEK is on clarinets, saxaphones, bassoon and voice, and Glynis Loman is on cello and voice.

For the 41-minute title work "Regenerations" (recorded in 2015) they are joined by Steve Norton on saxes and clarinets, and Yuri Zbitnov on percussion and voice.

For the 38-minute, four-part work "Alternate Tales from Linear Combinations and Transformations" (recorded in 1996) they co-feature Mark McGrain on trombone, Craig Schildhauer on bass, Rob Bethel on cello and Forrest Larsen on viola for the first two parts, Sydney Smart on drums (for part one) and Laurence Cook replacing him for parts two and three.

Both works are high, full-bore free improv spontaneities that pay close attention to timbral sound-color shaping as well as freely expressive collective improvisations. Each shifting grouping of instruments gives rise to color spectrums alternatingly bright or impastoed, clustered or speckled depending on the moment.

This is less an individual solo-oriented music than a collective endeavor. Sometimes a group of instruments and occasionally a single instrument is more in the foreground than others, quite naturally, yet the end-effect is of group sonics.

This perhaps is not for the timid listener. It is uncompromising in its overall thrust. It creates its own world and you fit yourself in as listener well or not depending on your predispositions. In other words, this is free music of a distinctive sort, well paced, serious, advanced in its own way. It is very good indeed. If there is a New England school of free music this is a vivid part of it. Recommended!