Liner Notes by PEK

Leap of Faith is the core duet of the Leap of Faith Orchestra (LOFO) comprised of PEK on clarinets, saxophones, clarinets & 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.

In March of 2020, just before the onset of the pandemic, I had a first session with a new percussionist, Michael Knoblach, entitled Main Sequence…  Although Michael plays the drum set, in recent years he has been focused on mostly unusual percussion.  This duet with the Evil Clown percussion arsenal along with instruments from Michael’s huge collection available enabled wonderful new sonority.  Michael plays at a quieter mean dynamic than is typical for Evil Clown ensembles.  Leap of Faith, in particular, has stretches of this quieter space in nearly every improvisation, but the mean dynamic is typically much louder.  It was very interesting to focus an entire set on my lower volume vocabulary.  This set, Intended References, marks Michaels eighth appearance on Evil Clown, 5 with Expanse and now 3 with this quartet edition of Leap of Faith.

I first played with trumpeter Vance Provey at a show at pianist Eric Zinman’s Studio 234 last summer (2021) in a sextet with Eric, Stephen Haynes, Eric Rosenthal and Nate McBride.  It was a great performance, and I immediately recruited Vance and Nate who had not previously played on an Evil Clown session for future performances.  Since then, Vance has played on ten Evil Clown sets, 3 with Turbulence and 6 with Leap of Faith.  Turns out that Vance and Glynis go way back to their Bennington college days with trumpet genius Bill Dixon’s Black Music improvisation department where Glynis was a student and Vance was on the faculty (although not exactly at the same time).  Glynis and Vance had not previously performed together, but both are part of the large scene in the Northeast of improvisors associated with Bill Dixon’s seminal program.

Intended References is the third iteration by this quartet edition of Leap of Faith with Michael on his unusual percussion and Vance on trumpet as the guests joining Glynis and myself.  As I often do when there is a particularly strong session with a new configuration of players, I form a special edition of Leap of Faith to explore the capabilities of the new lineup.  The quartet certainly was in fine form here on our third session, and I will definitely schedule more sets in the future for this variation of Leap of Faith.

I really like this set, and I bet you will too…

PEK 8/7/2022