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 2026, we have recorded over 65 albums on Evil Clown with greatly varied ensembles.  All the smaller Evil Clown Ensembles 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. 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.  More recently, the Turbulence Orchestra and Sub-Units project has been performing twice a year in Brattleboro VT.

Windward Havoc was scheduled originally to be Turbulence Orchestra. I assign the “Orchestra Suffix” to the ensemble name when there are 8 or more performers in the unit – Enough players to ensure there are several different sections of instruments of like family/timbre. For various reasons Bob, Hilary and Kelsey, all regulars in the Turbulence horn player roster, ended up with conflicts for this date by the time it came around, and the planned ensemble of 9 was reduced to 6.

Flutist David Welans is here for his second 2026 appearance following Expanse – Amplitudes, back in January. David performed on 6 albums by Expanse meets the JMDE Quartet, Turbulence and Turbulence Orchestra during 2021 to 2023 and then was not available for a while. He played for some years with Michael Knoblach and Eric Dahlman in the JMDE Quartet with a great Chinese Musician named Jimmy Zhao who plays Erhu and many other traditional Chinese instruments.  It is not unusual in the Evil Clown project for musicians to participate for a while, for life events of various categories to interfere with availability for a period, and for them to return to more frequent participation later. David is an excellent musician (who is principally a flute player) and is very welcome to the active Evil Clown Roster in 2026.

Sextet is plenty of performers, so of course we charged ahead with the available players like I always do, but I dropped “Orchestra” from the band name. The remaining ensemble is an example of what I call balanced: 2 reeds, 2 brass and 2 rhythm section. All the horn players spent time on the auxiliary percussion, electronic, and electro acoustic instruments which are permanently installed in the studio. The result is a great example of the broad palette aesthetic executed by an experienced group of hard core Evil Clown regulars. The piece naturally transforms through a long series of distinct sonorites as the players all execute instrument changes over the duration.

PEK 1/18/2026