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.

Its not unusual for Evil Clown Headquarters Livestreaming sessions to undergo some change in personnel between the initial planning stage and the performance.  This set was planned to be Axioms which is the Ensemble featuring the poetry of Jane Spokenword, wife of bassist Albey onBass, who has appeared on many Evil Clown recordings by many Evil Clown ensembles.  Albey and Jane currently live in NYC and are a bit less available to our schedule.  A few years ago, Albey introduced us to guitarist Chris Alford who currently lives in New Orleans, but is from the Boston area.  Chris visits family periodically, and when he does, I schedule sets around his availability.  Axioms sets have included trios with Jane, Albey and me, quartets with Glynis added and a quintet with Chris added. 

Chris reached out a month or so ago letting me know that he would be in town for roughly a month and I scheduled three sets for him:  Metal Chaos Ensemble – One Step Beyond Logic which was already on the book, for last week, Axioms – Logical Consequences meant to be the second quintet Axioms edition, and Leap of Faith – Correlations for one day later.  I don’t usually schedule sessions on adjacent days, but Albey is travelling up from NYC for two sets, so I scheduled two back-to-back sets to make it easier for Albey to make it. 

Anyway, Jane was unable to make the session, so I repurposed it as a Leap of Faith set.  Last week, I got an email from Jim who was the drummer scheduled for the Tuesday that he could not make that set, so I switched him over to Monday and I added Vance Provey, one of our regular trumpet players. 

Albey had asked if he could bring along Jose Arroyo, a conga player, to the Tuesday set, so I added Michael Knoblach on percussion to that set.  So, the Tuesday Leap of Faith set will have a two-person percussion section instead of the planned drummer Jim. 

Pure improvisation, as we practice it at Evil Clown, is much less sensitive to personal changes than most other styles of music where sudden changes can present problems.   The sextet we landed on for Logical Consequences is comprised of strong and experienced improvisors who created an excellent work transforming over a broad range of sonorities across the duration of the performance.

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

• PEK 7/16/2024