The vision of the overall Evil Clown project is to create an extremely broad universe of sound and to realize

All of these Works follow up on ideas introduced in Expansions by PEK which was performed in 1994. This Frame Notation Score took two years to prepare and contained more conventional staff notation within its Frame Notation Structure than the newer pieces which contain none. Although the 3 days of performances were a great success (at least artistically), the enormous amount of work involved discouraged me and I set aside the pursuit of scores for large ensembles for the balance of the Archival Period which concluded in 2001. When I emerged from the great Hiatus in 2015, I resolved to return to these ideas with some refinements: 1) Eliminate the conventional staff notation in the frames and replace it with events with greater precision on the clock and more generic symbols guiding the improvisation, 2) broaden the palette to include a much bigger range of sonorities, and 3) increase the ensemble size to over 20 performers.

I succeeded in meeting these goals in these 6 major works. After The Photon Epoch I prepared an eighth score, Systems of Celestial Mechanics, which has not been performed for several reasons: 1) difficulty/cost of obtaining a venue since two of the best venues (the Somerville Armory, and Pickman Hall at the Longy School of Music) are no longer available, 2) back problems which make it very difficult to move all of the equipment required from Evil Clown Headquarters, and 3) loss of opportunity and momentum due to the pandemic. It’s been nearly four years since the last performance as of this writing and I have no current plans to continue. That’s OK since we are always evolving at Evil Clown into new territory and the recent work is new and exciting in a different way. However, the performance of these six Scores from 2016 to 2019 form an important portion of the development of Evil Clown’s works during the Contemporary Period and the ideas have had a lasting impact on our continuing development.

Two additional sections are included below:

1. A portion of the Long Essay dealing with the Frame Notation Scores, Transformation Focused Improvisation – On the History and Aesthetic of the Evil Clown DIY record label, which I wrote in 2021 during the pandemic.
2. Collected review excerpts. Evil Clown has been broadly written about in a number of venues. The Frame Notation Score CDs, however, were so different that it was easy to get reviewers to weigh in. The full reviews and links to the full reviews where they live on the net are included on the album pages.

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.  This preparation work was performance and not rehearsal.

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.

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 in the orchestra. This allows enormous freedom of decision making for each performer and means that we do not have to rehearse these pieces prior to performance. We rely on all 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.

All the other contemporaneous Evil Clown performances and recordings by all the ensembles, Leap of Faith, String Theory, 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.    

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.

I have composed a seventh score (Systems of Celestial Mechanics) which I plan to mount at some point in the future…  There is a lot of advance work to do before I can do that including locating an affordable venue, raising the ensemble, and creating the parts customized for those players.  I’d like to get this project up and running on a regular basis again, but it is a huge amount of work for me, and I think I will focus on smaller and medium sized ensembles for a while.  Ideally, I’d like to use the completed works to get a feature venue with time enough for a rehearsal and several performances across adjacent days.  Although the design allows for a minimum of rehearsal, I know that if we play one of these compositions several times, the results will be very different each time, and probably improve as we go along.  Time will tell.

PEK – 2021

Review Excerpts

The Expanding Universe

Excerpt from Karl Ackermann Review

“… PEK and the Leap of Faith Orchestra collectively have the gift of being able to discover music where it lives and one would be justified in believing that they could find aesthetic value in the rhythm of windshield wipers as certainly as with a saxophone. The Expanding Universe only marginally revolves around recognizable spheres like the bass, vibes or cello. There are nebulas of boomwhakers, fog horns, sirens and pieces of metal attracted by the gravitational pull. Like any uncharted exploration, attention to detail makes this experimental journey a memorable experience…”

Karl Ackermann – AllAboutJazz 

Excerpt from Gapplegate Music Review

“…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.…”

Gregory Applegage

Squidco Blurb

The Leap of Faith Orchestra is a large improvisation ensemble comprised of 5 Sub-units–Leap of Faith, Metal Chaos Ensemble, String Theory, Turbulence, and the New Language Collaborative–all assembled here for a massive and far-ranging experience, scored with time indices and English language descriptions by leader David Peck; dense and spectacular.

Squidco Staff

Excerpt From Review by Bruce Lee Gallanter

“… Considering that the Evil Clown label which documents all of the Leap of Faith and their offshoot projects, is closing in at nearly a 100 releases, this disc might just be the best one I’ve reviewed. A completely outstanding effort all the way around…”

Bruce Lee Gallanter – Download Music Gallery

By Eric Baylies, The Noise – Boston

“Do not be deceived by two songs. This CD is 90 minutes of pure improvised bliss. Free jazz, noise, rock, it’s all here, but mostly free jazz. This might be among the free-est recordings I have ever heard, right up with Arthur Doyle, Albert Ayler, or Henry Cow. There are so many musicians, and so many instruments, that it is difficult to keep track of what’s going on. This is a fantastic, amazing record. I suggest you check out some of their other recordings online. The Expanding Universe is not easy listening, but the patient listener will be rewarded.”

Review Excerpts

Possible Universes

Excerpt from Karl Ackerman Review

“… The Leap of Faith catalog has grown at a rapid pace in recent years; remarkable in that the collective and the enormous orchestra stay largely intact through these always complex works. Possible Universes works in a surprisingly paradoxical way, allowing structure and freedom to coexist, while constantly challenging the ear. It’s not quite like anything else.…”

Karl Ackerman, All About Jazz

Excerpt From Jazz Right Now Review

“… Some of what’s being played tears a page from traditional classical music while the rest of the material is highly experimental in nature. One of the guitar players is establishing melodic lines while the rest of the orchestra is trying to maintain its sanity. A lot of moving parts are in motion which makes the music fertile ground for even more new ideas.…”

Marc Edwards – Jazz Right Now

Squidco Blurb

“… Started in 1995 as an interdisciplinary unit of improvisational artists led by Boston area reedist/multi-instrumentalist David Peck and cellist Glynis Lomon, exploring multi-phonics, glissando, microtones, graphic & descriptive scores, and extended techniques, expanding the ensemble with like-minded musicians, here in this 2017 recording of full 24-piece orchestra.…”

Squidco Staff

Review Excerpts

Cosmological Horizons

Excerpt from Karl Ackermann Review

“… For several years PEK has utilized his Frame Notation technique where the score is seen in written descriptions and archetypal symbols within duration bars. This allows the musicians to immediately sight their cues as well as providing a view of the larger scope of the piece. To see the score laid out in hard-copy form is to witness a cross between visual art, Gantt charts and complex schematics.…”

Karl Ackermann – AllAboutJazz 

Excerpt from Nick Ostrum Review

“… although the overall effect is compelling enough, repeated listens uncover the mechanics, the discrete explorations of timbre and tone, the interlocking and interdependent musical gears that are turning at each moment. A single, intricate track recorded live at Killian Hall (MIT), this really is an opus, and one well worth checking out…”

Nick Ostrum, SquidsEar

Excerpt from Contemporary Fusion Review

“…After forty years (+) of reviewing music, both “straight-up” and “out there“, I can truly say that the music from LOFO is different than anything I’ve ever listened to…  …if you claim to be a fan of adventurous improvised music, this album (and their entire series, in fact) MUST be in your collection – it’s some of the best creative energy I’ve ever heard, and that’s saying a lot, because I’ve not only listened to a lot of such, but did (in fact) perform some of my own madness back in the day! …”

Rotcod Zzaj, Contemporary Fusion

Excerpt from Bruce Lee Gallanter Review

As someone who genuinely appreciates large ensemble/big band music, I am awed by how much work Mr. Peck has put into this serious piece. The piece starts off somewhat chaotically, yet somehow there sounds like certain subgroups are being directed. Chattering reeds & horns, seesawing strings, layers of percussion erupting, colliding and interwoven thoughtfully, explosive Cecil Taylor-like piano… Considering how many musicians are involved here (24 by my count), it is amazing at how focused, engaging and thoughtfully balanced this is.

Squidco Blurb

The largest ensemble of Boston-area David M. Peck’s Leap of Faith collective using Peck’s frame notation compositional method of written descriptions and graphic symbols to allow large ensembles to create major works without extensive rehearsing, accompanied by a 23 page booklet that illustrates that concept and details this 2018 Killian Hall, MIT, concert