Liner Notes by PEK

I formed Turbulence in 2015 as I started to assemble players for the Leap of Faith Orchestra. Turbulence, the extended horn section for the Orchestra (along with guests on other instruments), also records and performs as an independent unit. As if this writing in 2026, we have recorded over 60 albums on Evil Clown with greatly varied ensembles.  All the smaller Evil Clown bands are really more about a general approach, rather than a specific set of musicians.  A session gets credited to Turbulence when it is mostly horn players and the only musician on all of them is me. The sessions range from an early duet with Steve Norton and me (Vortex Generation Mechanisms) to a 5-horn band with bass and two percussionists (Encryption Schemes) to four albums by the side project Turbulence Doom Choir which feature myself, multiple tubas, percussion, electronics, and signal processing and many other configurations.  More recently, the Turbulence Orchestra and Sub-Units project has been performing twice a year in Brattleboro VT which features the largest ensemble size of any of my large group projects.

I add the “Orchestra” Suffix to the ensemble name when the ensemble size reaches 8. As I see it, an ensemble is structurally an orchestra when it is large enough to contain multiple members each of multiple sections of like timbre instruments. 8 players seems to always qualify here at Evil Clown Headquarters.  Originally this set was scheduled for 10 players – 8 horns plus bass and percussion – which is about the largest ensemble we can handle at ECH. However, as almost always happens with such a large ensemble we lost a few at the last moment (to illness this time) and ended up with merely 6 horns making the full ensemble size 8. 

Steering Factor’s horn lineup ended up on 6 Evil Clown regulars in a balance between reeds and brass of 3 each. The reeds are PEK, Michael Caglianone and Hilary Noble: Mike is here all the time, and our playing is very tight together, and with brass wiz John Fugarino. Hilary is busy and comes less often, but I always enjoy when he comes since he brings a modern jazz aesthetic which is uncommon among my usual horn players. In several sections of the work Michael and I go into Hilary’s jazzy territory. The brass section is my two star trumpet players of the moment: John Fugarino and Eric Dahlman, and Duane reed on double belled euphonium.

The rhythm section is comprised of regulars Scott Samenfeld on bass and Michael Knoblach on percussion. For a set about a month back I got a nice guitar as a house instrument for the studio.  Scott plays guitar towards the end of the piece for about 10 minutes.  Micheal played from a sitting position on the floor as he always does and this time, he played Evil Clown’s instruments featuring an Indian Festival drum and a big set of Tibetan bowls.

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

• PEK 9/22/2026