Liner Notes by PEK

Leap of Faith is the core duet of the Leap of Faith Orchestra (LOFO) comprised of PEK on clarinets, saxophones, double reeds & flutes, and Glynis Lomon on cello, aquasonic & voice.  The ensemble is based in Boston and dates back to the early 90s.  We utilize a huge arsenal of additional Evil Clown instruments to improvise long works featuring transformations across highly varied sonorities.   At times, the core unit has been a trio or even a quartet.  The longest running core unit was comprised of PEK, Glynis and drummer Yuri Zbitnov, who played for the last couple of years of the archival period and the first 5 years of the reboot starting in 2015.  The ensemble has always been highly modular, and our many recordings (well over 100) feature the core unit in dozens of configurations with a huge list of guests and occasionally as only the core unit with no guests.  Currently, the core unit is the duet of PEK and Lomon and we are regularly presenting LIVESTREAMs to YouTube from Evil Clown Headquarters with other guest performers.

Evil Clown Ensembles are assigned the “Orchestra” suffix when the ensemble size reaches 8.  Sometimes our Orchestral performances have much larger band sizes, but 8 or 9 is as many players as I can fit into Evil Clown Headquarters.  Classical “Orchestras” are much larger, although chamber orchestras might have as few as 12 or 15 musicians.  To me the defining characteristic of an Orchestra is sections that share timbre and interact together and in units with the other sections.  Improvisation ensembles reach this level of complex organization at about 8 musicians and that is why my naming scheme works the way it does…  The Evil Clown Roster generally contains about 50 players who participate in the many different ongoing ensembles.  Evil Clown Ensembles are not fixed to a specific group of people, but rather to an aesthetic problem and perhaps a core unit.  A session is generally credited to LOFO when it has Glynis and myself and the aesthetic problem is orchestral improvisation. 

Glynis and I played a lot with Tor Snyder (guitar) in ensembles of Raqib Hassan in the 90s.  He later moved to New York, and we lost touch… Dennis Warren (drums) also used to play with Raqib and is now located in Western Mass.  I reconnected with Tor and Dennis around the same time a few years back and since they play together often with trumpeter Vance Provey, when I schedule Tor for a session, I generally also invite Dennis and Vance. I usually try to get Albey onBass for this Leap of Faith Edition, but he is living in NYC now and is able to make fewer Evil Clown Session than he was a few years back. I got our most regular bassist Scott Samenfeld to sub for this set.  The ensemble is rounded out with a horn section of PEK, John Fugarino and relative newbie Cliff White…

Dennis is a very distinctive drummer who studied with Milford Graves and plays in a similar high energy continuous style. Consequently, this edition of LOF is always pretty different than most of our other sets which tend to transform through both higher and lower energy states over the length of a work. Tor is also a pretty high-energy performer, and the combo of Tor and Dennis draws out the high-energy side of Glynis and me to match. I like to have a big horn front line for this edition so that we can have both sections of horn frenzy and line counterpoint against the high energy from the strings and percussion, so we frequently end up with enough performers to earn the “Orchestra” suffix for the ensemble name. 

Fitness Payoffs is a very well executed broad palette pure improvisation by a highly seasoned group of Evil Clown regulars with some of the inter-ensemble history dating back to the early 80s. Its really fun to bring such an experienced group into Evil Clown Headquarters where we can leverage the full skill set and the amazing tools available to create such exquisitely crafted improvisation.

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

PEK, 1/11/2026