The core trio of the Leap of Faith Orchestra is Boston area PEK on clarinets, saxophones, double reeds & flutes, Glynis Lomon on cello, aquasonic & voice, and Yuri Zbitnov on drums & percussion, here expanded with Eric Dahlman on trumpet, whistles and game calls, and and Jim Warshauer on saxophone, in an incredibly diverse live performance at Outpost 186, in Cambridge, 2018.
"Leap of Faith is the core trio of the Leap of Faith Orchestra (LOFO) comprised of PEK on clarinets, saxophones, double reeds & flutes, Glynis Lomon on cello, aquasonic & voice, and Yuri Zbitnov on drums & percussion. 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. The ensemble has always been highly modular and our many recordings feature the core trio in dozens of configurations with a huge list of guests.
I recently ran across trumpeter and overtone vocalizer Eric Dahlman who played with early period Leap of Faith bassist Craig Schildhauer in the 90s when Leap of Faith was first active. He came down for the last Leap of Faith Orchestra performance at Third Life Studios a few months ago. He plays with a bunch of different improvisers in the Boston area. I always love recruiting players with prior associations with other musicians, since when several people with long relationships join the project together, the ensembles benefit from their history.
Eric has a band and a long association with reedman Jim Warshauer. For the Evil Clown Headquarters recording session, Turbulence - Vorticity, I invited Eric and Jim to join myself and Yuri Zbitnov, the primary drummer/percussionists for the many Evil Clown ensembles. This was a great set, which leverages the skills two deeply connected duets.
That set was so successful, I set up the next open date of the Outpost 186 residency for Leap of Faith with Eric and Jim as the guests. I knew that adding Glynis to the quartet Turbulence ensemble would be terrific and it certainly was! Jim brought a nice set of horns to complement mine. I am reminded in two ways of the Great Steve Norton, who played with LOF for about a year and a half following the 2015 reboot. The first is his occasionally lyrical side, and the second is the number of possible unusual instrument combinations. I was again impressed by Eric's overtone voice skills. Yuri and Glynis tore it up like usual.
After only a few sessions, Eric and Jim have already made great contributions to the Evil Clown catalog!! Looking forward to playing more with these guys in the future... Look for more by this same quintet at some point in the future."-Liner Notes by PEK