Liner Notes by PEK

I formed Turbulence in 2015 as I started to assemble players for the Leap of Faith Orchestra. Turbulence, the extended horn section for the Orchestra (along with guests on other instruments), also records and performs as an independent unit. As if this writing in 2023, we have recorded over 40 albums on Evil Clown with greatly varied ensembles.  All the smaller Evil Clown bands are really more about a general approach, rather than a specific set of musicians.  A session gets credited to Turbulence when it is mostly horn players and the only musician on all of them is me.  A session gets credited to Turbulence Orchestra when the size of the band reaches 8 or more performers.  The sessions range from an early duet with Steve Norton and me (Vortex Generation Mechanisms) to a 5-horn band with bass and two percussionists (Encryption Schemes) to four albums by the side project Turbulence Doom Choir which feature myself, multiple tubas, percussion, electronics, and signal processing and many other configurations.

The most frequent way that new players join the Evil Clown Roster is from a recommendation from a current member.  A while back, Albey recommended horn player Hilary Noble, and we booked him for a session.  Hilary is a busy player, and also teaches at Berklee, so after we arranged a set, a conflict arose, and he couldn’t do it.  We scheduled something else which also ended in conflict.  Then the third attempt he got covid…  However, It was clear that he was really interested, and I am always looking for new high caliber players, so it was just a matter of time until we worked it out and got him over for a session. 

The third session was meant to be a 5-horn septet with bass and drums for the Turbulence.  The other horns were me, Michael Caglianone, Bob Moores, and John Fugarino, with Scott Samenfeld on bass and Jim Lucchese on drums.  We did that set on 2/19 about a month ago as a sextet.  It was an excellent performance with all the performers moving away from their primary instruments and playing on the auxiliary instruments.  When this happens in broad palette long form improvisation, a steady flow of transformations across sonorities naturally occurs and creates the form of the work. 

Anyway, it would have been great for that to be Hilary’s first appearance, but of course covid is a deal-breaker.  I immediately started work on scheduling a repeat of the session with Hilary added, and very nearly succeeded in getting everyone.  Jim was not able to make the date, and I got Michael Knoblach to fill in on drums.  Michael usually plays traditional and unusual percussion, but does play drum set when drums are needed.  This version of Turbulence with Scott on the bass is more jazz oriented than most Evil Clown ensemble’s performances, so I use drums instead of percussion.  Of course, there is a ton of percussion in the studio and nearly all the players double the percussion instruments along with their main axes.  Hilary brought a very nice set of 3 conga drums, so between his running back and forth between conga and sax/flute and the others playing percussion there is a great deal of percussion texture.

Anyway, I like this set and I bet you will too…

PEK – 3/24/2024