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.

It is not unusual for Evil Clown Headquarters Livestreaming sessions to undergo some change in personnel between the initial planning stage and the performance.  Isotropic Radiators was originally planned to be an octet Leap of Faith session around the availability of Jiaxin Wan, our star guzheng player who is in the Boston area studying at Berklee.  Also included in the planned set were Glynis Lomon (cello +), a four-horn front line, plus Scott Samenfeld (bass) and Jared Seabrook (drums).  A few days before the performance I heard from Jiaxin that she was recovering from appendicitis!   And the day of, I heard from Jared that he was also not well. Unfortunately, I only have one guzheng performer in the roster, but I do have several drummers and I was able to get Michael Knoblach to sub for Jared on percussion within about an hour…

We all really enjoy playing with Jiaxin, and we were sad that she missed this set.  I had thought that she would have returned to China following completing her Berklee studies at the summer, but we recently found out that she found a job in the US working on the soundtrack to a movie about Chinese subject that will allow her to remain for around another year.  My hope is that now that she has completed her studies she will be able to make sessions more often for the next year until she returns home.

Anyway, when the ensemble composition changes at the last second, we always continue with the set, but sometimes the character of the improvisation is pretty different as a result.  When Jiaxin and others have played with the Leap of Faith Chinese Orchestra, leader Jimmy Zhao (erhu + other Chinese instruments) has brought as many as 5 Chinese players to the session to join as many western improvisors.  These sets have a pull between a Chinese folk sound and a western improvisation sound – sometimes sounding more like one or the other and sometimes blending together.  When Jiaxin has come alone to these sessions, she keeps the Chinese character of her instrument but joins leaves behind the folk music component and joins us in the broad palette improvisation we specialize in here at Evil Clown Headquarters.

So, in this case, changing one player in the ensemble had a dramatic impact on the overall sound of the unit.  That being said, this is a really strong Leap of Faith line-up.  Every single player in this unit is a regular.  The newest member of the roster is bassist Scott Samenfeld with over a dozen sets under his belt, everyone else has at least 30 sessions and is a frequent participant.  We specialize in pure improvisation units that are larger than typically attempted by most in the free improvisation world, and this session really shows that our hundreds of improvisations have prepared us to improvise great music by larger ensembles in the broad palette studio at Evil Clown Headquarters…

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

• PEK 8/3/2024