Liner Notes by PEK

In May of 2021, I opened Evil Clown Headquarters to other fully vaccinated musicians, and the first session of the new age was scheduled for the second set of the Expanse sound world.  Michael and I both enjoyed the auspicious first set right before the pandemic shut down and collaboration became an ongoing Evil Clown project, both as a duet for some sets and as a larger unit for others.  As an ongoing project, it needed a permanent name, so after some thought I came up with Expanse which evokes space and restraint, the central idea behind this ensemble at its inception.

Michael has been our most frequent percussionist across the Evil Clown Ensembles and Expanse has had a number of different approaches over the last few years. One of Expanses flavors is a smaller, more chamber sized unit than is typical of most Evil Clown sessions. As the Evil Clown story has unfolded, the roster of performers who want to participate has grown – we currently have over 50 players who do at least a few sets a year. I am interested in the difficult and interesting aesthetic problem of large ensemble improvisation, so these two contributing factors mean that most of our performances have an ensemble size of 6 or more.

Michael’s unusual percussion approach includes a lot of quiet and subtle sounds, which he is able to use less in the larger groups, so I have been scheduling small unit Expanse sessions to make more use of this sound space. Sweep was initially scheduled to be a repeat of the quintet Expanse Edition that performed Amplitudes a few months back in January 2026. We had two of our number call in sick – both David Welans and Kelsey Gallagher were unable to make it. No worries! This happens often, and luckily improvisation is not so reliant on a specific ensemble since we do not rely on repertoire which is fixed in advance. Losing a musician simply means that the aesthetic problem posed to and solved by the ensemble in performance changes.

Anyway, Kelsey cancelled a full day in advance which gave me plenty of time to get brass wizard John Fugarino to fill in. So, we hit with quintet instead of quartet – different instrumentation, but also a slightly smaller band with a more spacious and generally quieter solution.

I was expecting this to be a great session, and I was not disappointed.

PEK, 16 March 2026