Liner Notes by PEK

Albey onBass and Jane SpokenWord were associated with Cecil Taylor’s final trio. Following Cecil’s passing they were in Boston for about a year in 2017-2018 and Albey performed a dozen or so times with Leap of Faith, Metal Chaos Ensemble and Turbulence. In November 2018, Albey and I had been discussing doing a duet, but we decided to include Jane’s poetry as a trio. This new Evil Clown Ensemble we called Axioms, which to me is an apt name for a band which features words – something that most Evil Clown sessions do not.

There are two definitions:

1) a statement or proposition that is regarded as being established, accepted, or self-evidently true

2) a statement or proposition on which an abstractly defined structure is based (mathematics)

These two meanings bridge the distance between poetic discussion of truths and abstract musical structures.

A few months later, about a year before the virus, Albey and Jane moved to New Orleans, so the original session from December 2018, Manifestations, had been our only recording to date.

Back in July 2021, soon after I reopened Evil Clown Headquarters for YouTube streaming performances / recordings (following the time when musicians could be fully vaccinated for the virus), Albey reached out saying that he and Jane would be in the Boston area for a few weeks, and we recorded Hypotheses a few days later. In the fall, they moved back to the Boston Area, and Illusions and Reality is the third session since last July.

This new set, Illusions and Reality, has a new slightly smaller lineup with the Jane/Albey duet and the PEK/Glynis Lomon duet. An interesting dynamic arises when small subgroups with deep history play together in a larger unit. Jane and Albey have been married for 50 years and they are deeply connected as an improvisation duet with Albey playing bass and Jane reciting her poetry. PEK and Glynis have played together in Leap of Faith and other ensembles since the early 90s. The duets combined interact as two duets as well as the quartet members interacting individually.

An early core Leap of Faith core unit was PEK and Glynis with bassist Craig Schildhauer. This version of Leap of Faith was around for 3 or 4 years in the mid-90s. While doing this performance I kept thinking back to this Leap of Faith configuration from nearly 30 years ago. Had that trio done a set with an excellent poet such as Jane, we would have a much earlier document of a two string players / one horn player ensemble with a guest poet.

IMHO this is the strongest Axioms set so far… the interplay between Glynis and Albey is getting telepathic… the instrumental support for Jane’s words is outstanding… Hopefully, the scheduling will allow frequent repetition of this quartet Axioms ensemble. I like this performance and I think you will too…