Leon, David - Bird's Eye CD
SKU
28-PYOC32.2
David Leon - soprano & alto saxophones, alto flute, piccolo
DoYeon Kim - gayagum, voice
Lesley Mok - drumset & percussion, glockenspiel
“Saxophonist/composer David Leon weaves influences from Afro-Cuban and Korean traditional music into innovative, stunning new jazz forms. David Leon David Leon is a Miami-born saxophonist, woodwinds player and composer living in Brooklyn, New York. Besides Bird's Eye, he also co-leads the double trio Locomotive with trumpeter Adam O'Farrill and has collaborated with artists including Tomas Fujiwara, Nick Dunston, Dafnis Prieto, Ingrid Laubrock, Russell Hall, Cory Smythe, Weston Olencki, and others. He is a core member of Lisa Hoppe's Third Reality, Lesley Mok: The Living Collection, Adam O'Farrill's For These Streets & Bird Blown Out of Latitude, William Brittelle MetaSimulacrum, Vicente Hansen's Orlando Furioso and others.”
“I began learning to play Afrocuban folkloric music right around the time I started to write the music for Bird’s Eye. These pieces drew from the counterpoint I found so captivating in Cuban music—its vibrant presence, supple beat and fluid groove, the feeling of autonomy in each part. The calls from the Other Side. At the same time, I was becoming increasingly curious about microtonality and the enormous weight that its intervals and resonances seemed to carry. DoYeon’s training in Korean traditional music brought a nuanced understanding of how these malleable resonances could function in a folkloric context and beyond; I’d always admired Lesley’s wide beat and gestural poetry at the drums, their thoughtful investigation with time and how to bend it. It became quickly clear that this band could be a vehicle to explore all the musical bits I was curious about at once: a search for the notes between the notes. We rehearsed an enormous amount. We shared even more meals together, an unofficial tenant of our process. Our goal was to learn to intuit some collective macro beyond our individualism, to swoop in/out of gesture together, to blend more than to mix, to form constellations with our sounds. After some thousandth hour of searching and softening, the music began to congeal. Bird’s Eye is a reflection of our time with one another—a period of amalgamation more than combination, more gazpacho than ceviche.”—David Leon, Brooklyn, August 29, 2023
- LabelPyroclastic
- UPC020286246978