Notes by PEK

I’ve been thinking a bit about early times in my music career recently, so I dug through my hard drives and found the one that has the digitized files of my early work from 84 to 92. Most of it is not well recorded, but there are some studio sessions and some things better recorded by Space on a 4-channel Reel to Reel recorder.

After moving from California to Boston to attend the Berklee School of Music in 1989, my most important mentor in free improvisation was Masashi Harada. Masashi is a gifted improvisor who used piano, percussion, voice, dance, and visual imagery in his art making. For a few years we played music constantly in different settings and Masashi recorded everything. Some of the sets were at his apartment with a whole bunch of different players from the scene, but we also had some bands. Masashi was the leader of this scene, but I was his helper and a constant participant.

The most important band was The Masashi Harada Sextet, and the first major thing we did was record Plexus in the studio. Both cellist Glynis Lomon, who I have played with ever since (except during my long break in the 00s), and trumpeter John Fugarino, who recently came back to us and is now my most frequent Evil Clown contributor, were in this band. Masashi played piano. The drummer was Laurence Cook, renowned drummer for Bill Dixon, and the bassist was Atume Aton. This was a heavy-hitting all-star band of powerhouse experienced improvisors. I thought of this band recently on the sad news of Laurence’s passing.

Unlike the rest of my work with Masashi and most of my own work under Evil Clown which was/is all purely improvised, The Masashi Harada Sextet performed Masashi’s compositions. I think there were 10 or so in the book and they contained structural devices controlling the form and melodic information that was used in several different ways in the context of long works that were mostly improvisational. It was a great band that had perhaps 10 or so performances over a period of about a year and a half.

I don’t have video from this period, but I will post a static image from Masashi’s Artwork on his Facebook with the Audio on YouTube for this and future MHS posts from the Deep Archive.

PEK – 10/30/2026

Constructed Photo Works by Masashi Harada