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 loft apartment with a whole bunch of different players from the scene, but we also had several bands. Masashi was the leader of this scene, but I was his helper and a constant participant.

When I moved, I got space in the Berklee dorm, even though I was 25 at the time, so I did not have to locate an apartment in advance. After the first two terms I sublet a room from a Music Production and Engineering Student named Jeff Cleland for the summer of 1990. They got a certain amount of open studio time for experimentation and Jeff offered a couple of these 2-hour windows to me. Jeff and his other engineering pal students were interested in what we were doing musically because it was so different than the bulk of their other options.

This studio session is from June 1990 which must be immediately after I met Jeff. It is also very early in my actual performance history with Masashi. It is the second recording with him I have in the record – the first is a duet from 6/4 most likely in his loft. My recollection is I went to the Middle East Café to see the Joe Maneri Trio (Joe, Masashi and Mat Maneri) in the winter (Feb?) of 1990. I was floored by their performance and afterwards I basically accosted Masashi saying that we should play together. I think he was taken aback by this large white man coming up on him and he suggested that I should play with Eric Zinman. In fact, John Fugarino and I did play with Eric a bunch of times at his apartment in Jamaica Plain for a while, but a few months later I managed to convince Masashi to play with me and this set in June was one of the first occasions that we did so.

So this set is very early in my history with John, and it may be the second time I ever played with Masashi. For such a green relationship it is still a very strong performance, and it was very well recorded by my summer pals 35 years ago.

PEK – 11/1/2026

Constructed Photo Work by Masashi Harada