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.

The last Evil Clown LIVESTREAM, Maximizing Intrinsic Uncertainty, from just a week prior was also a Leap of Faith set with 5 performers in common with this set, Excluding Causal Connections (PEK,Glynis Lomon, Michael Caglianone, John Fugarino, and Scott Samenfeld).  That set was 3 horns and 3 strings – balanced on strings and horns with the extra string player Chris Alford who lives in New Orleans but visits family in the area once or twice a year.  The added players are regulars Michael Knoblach on percussion and clarinetist Kelsey Gallagher who is joining us here for her ninth Evil Clown appearance since her first in August of 2025). 

I’m always interested to see how different two sets close in time from the same ensemble can be when a few members change. These two performances share the same strong three horn front line and the cello/bass combo of Glynis and Scott, but create truly different sonorities when the guitar of Alford is present than when the percussion of Knoblach and the clarinet of Gallagher are present. The whole Evil Clown Aesthetic Concept is designed to produce different music every time by applying the same Grand Ideas with different resources – performers and sound making devices. Comparing these two adjacent performances demonstrates how effective this strategy is.

There are some new instruments here that make their debut. John brought an alto horn – like a smaller version of the baritone horn – a vertically held brass instrument that sounds a bit like a flugelhorn but a bit lower in pitch perhaps. I got my new bassoon this week and busted it out for the first time here – I have a bassoon which I used as one of my 6 horns during the archival period in the 90s, but in the contemporary period I have generally favored contrabassoon and other double reeds. Anyway, this is a far superior orchestral grade instrument, and it will be in the frequent rotation. The most exciting new acquisition is the Concert Marvin – a large conic metal resonating body with a bunch of heavy springs of different sizes welded all over it. The Marvin is insanely resonant and will be an iconic member of the Evil Clown Arsenal from now on. It also looks really bitchin!

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

PEK, 7/12/2026