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.

I really enjoy the aesthetic problem of combining musicians with very different backgrounds in improvisation settings.  Evil Clown ensembles have had classical players, jazz players, African drummers, and rock-oriented improvisors on the various projects over the years.  When percussionist Michael Knoblach joined the roster just before the pandemic he brought in Chinese musician Jimmy Zhao for an Expanse session.  Since then Jimmy has brought in a bunch of other Chinese musicians for the 3 Leap of Faith Chinese Orchestra performances.  A standout from these sessions is Jiaxin Wan, a guzheng player from China who is in Boston to attend the Berklee School of Music for film scoring.

She has since participated in 3 small format Leap of Faith and Expanse performances.  Her plan earlier this year was to leave the US at the end of the current Berklee term, so I scheduled Solving the Constrained Dynamics around her schedule.  Now it turns out she got a job in the area and will be around for another year, so we’ll be able to have her for more sessions in the next year or so.

I also invited Pipa player Ziyi Gao, but she ended up being sick this week and could not make the set.  Often when I am scheduling, I start off with a core group of people and then recruit additional players to fill out the ensemble.  Once I determined that Glynis was available, this was booked as a Leap of Faith show.  One common format for Leap of Faith is what I call a balanced ensemble which simply means that there are the same number of players in several sections of the ensemble.  This set was originally meant to be 8 players – 4 strings and 4 winds.  Evil Clown regulars Bob Moores, John Fugarino and Michael Caglianone and me in the horn section and Glynis, Jiaxin, Ziyi and bassist Scott Samenfeld in the string section.  Ziyi was sick and Michael Caglianone has car problems, so we ended up as a sextet, but still balanced at 3 strings and 3 winds.

I had thought I might also use a drummer, but none of the regulars were available.  For chunks of Leap of Faith’s long history, we have not had a drummer.  This typically makes the unit a bit more chamber oriented and less jazz oriented.  Most Contemporary Period Leap of Faith lineups do include drums, but we do some sets without, and they generally have a different character.  Drummers tend to elevate the energy level a bit, sets without drummers tend to have more lower energy sections in the development.  Lower energy does not mean less intensity, just quieter and with a bit more space.   

Solving the Constrained Dynamics is a great example of the Evil Clown Broad Palette Aesthetic at work.  Everyone plays other instruments besides their primary axes, so there is still plenty of percussion and electronic instruments present in the improvisation.

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

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• PEK 4/28/2024