Excerpt from PEK Liner Notes 

“… So, the final band was quintet – three horns and two strings – gaining one player and losing one player to the stupid virus.  Of course, in a contemporary session at Evil Clown headquarters there are plenty of percussion and electronic instruments that the players can double…   This group is comprised entirely of players from the roster with great experience and pedigree.  It was a no brainer to predict the performance would be stellar, and with the gifted skills of house engineer Joel Simches, the recording is also outstanding!!”  

PEK Liner Notes

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.

An early core ensemble (early 90s) was PEK, Lomon and Mark McGrain on trombone.  Following that version, the next core trio was PEK, Lomon and Craig Schildhuaer (double bass).   During this period the great drummer Syd Smart was a guest of both versions of Leap of Faith.  On several occasions all 5 of these players performed together as a quintet.  These ensembles all feature strings and winds sometimes with percussion in various combinations.  Recently, we have done several sets that follow one of these basic models with new contemporary period Evil Clown arrivals Ellwood Epps (tp), Vance Provey (tp), Nate McBride (b) and Eric Rosenthal (dr).  A few weeks back, we did a fantastic sextet set for Alex Lemski’s CMS series at the Lilypad in Cambridge MA with three strings, two horns (PEK & Provey) and drums.

Originally, this set was supposed to be a septet will all the above players:  3 horns, 3 strings and drums.  A studio recording follow up to the live Lilypad show with the optimal ensemble of all 7 of these amazing musicians.  However, as often happens as we approach an event, the makeup of the ensemble changed…  First Ellwood let me know several weeks before that he was going to tour his band up in Montreal and that he would not make this set…   Nate also had to withdraw due to conflicts.   So, the plan was to do a quintet with two horns, two strings and drums…   Then Covid played some tricks!  First, Ellwood let me know that one of his bandmates had Covid and his tour was cancelled, so he would make the set after all.  Then, the day of the performance, Eric emailed that he had been hanging out with someone who tested positive a few days prior and had to sit it out…  So, the final band was quintet – three horns and two strings – gaining one player and losing one player to the stupid virus.  Of course, in a contemporary session at Evil Clown headquarters there are plenty of percussion and electronic instruments that the players can double…

This group is comprised entirely of players from the roster with great experience and pedigree.  It was a no brainer to predict the performance would be stellar, and with the gifted skills of house engineer Joel Simches, the recording is also outstanding!!

PEK 4/16/2022