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 2025, we have recorded over 50 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 Turbulence Orchestra and Sub-Units with as many as 25 performers and four albums by the side project Turbulence Doom Choir which feature myself, multiple tubas, percussion, electronics, and signal processing and many other configurations.  

Many of the Turbulence sessions at Evil Clown Headquarters over the last few years have been smallish Turbulence Orchestra sets.  An Evil Clown Ensemble gets the “Orchestra” modifier at the end of the band name when at least 8 musicians are performing.  ECH can fit 10 or so performers depending on how much space their setups add up to.  We have a lot or horn players in the roster, so when I send out a broad invite for a Turbulence Livestream, we get a large group a lot of the time.

Sturm and Drang marks the triumphant return of space trumpeter Bob Moores.  Bob has been one of the most frequent members of the roster over the last 10 years or so.  He’s played with most of the projects and appears on over 100 of our albums.  Last fall he retired with his wife Deb to Maine and now is about a 3-hour drive away…  He took 3 or 4 months to get settled, and this is the first time he has made the drive down for a set.  He plans to come roughly once per month when the weather permits, so we’ll see him a bunch more times in 2025.

Making his first appearance at an ECH livestream is saxophonist Cliff White.  Cliff lives near Springfield MA which is about 90 minutes or so West of Boston on the pike.  He played at the last Turbulence Orchestra & Sub-Units performance at John Loggia’s amazing performance space at the 118 Elliot St Gallery in Brattleboro VT.  We’re doing that show twice per year, drawing the players from the Boston scene and from the western Mass/Brattleboro scenes.  Anyway, Cliff is the first of the Western Mass scene players that I have invited from the Brattleboro shows to make it to ECH and he did a fine job.  So, welcome Cliff…

Apart from newbie Cliff, this octet is comprised of players who have done many Turbulence sets.  This common configuration of Turbulence has bass, drums and a large horn section – here 6 horn players.  Scott is the most jazz-like of all the bass players in the roster, and for this ensemble I have Mike play the drum set instead of his usual unusual percussion set up.  So, this unit is sometimes like a large free jazz band…  an extension of a two-horn quartet or a three-horn quintet.  One big difference is the broad palette setting.  ECH is permanently set up with a ton of percussion, electro-acoustic instruments & electronic instruments.  Players with a lot of sessions under their belt really do a lot of doubling beyond their regular axes with these auxiliary instruments.  The constant instrument changes by many of the musicians mean that the instrumentation is constantly under transformation.  This broad palette concept naturally results in steady movement through a series of very different sonorities over the duration of the work.  In the hands of experienced improvisors like we have here, we get a very dynamic 70 minute long work with 25 or 30 distinct movements…

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

PEK – 2/23/2025