Turbulence Orchestra & Sub-Units: Smear Out the Difficulties

$15 Recommended Donation

The Turbulence Orchestra is a large format improvisation ensemble comprised of six or more horn players and a rhythm section. For this performance we will play four 15-minute improvisations each with a quarter of the total ensemble, take a short break and then perform an hour-long improvisation with all the musicians.

Since the pandemic, the Turbulence Orchestra has Livestreamed to YouTube eight times from Evil Clown Headquarters in Waltham with the ensemble size between 8 and 10 musicians – the largest unit that can easily fit in the Evil Clown Livestreaming Studio Space. Each of these performances is posted on the Evil Clown YouTube channel, released on CD/download available at bandcamp and other locations, and has an album page on the Evil Clown Webpage.

This is only the second Live Performance of the Turbulence Orchestra & Sub Units, and is the largest ensemble yet for this project (currently booked 13 performers with a few more likely). Another Evil Clown ensemble, The Leap of Faith Orchestra, however, has had many performances with units this size and larger. We performed 13 times in three years before the pandemic at the Third Life Studios in Somerville MA with as many as 15 players in the orchestra. The Third Life Studios sessions used exactly the format we will use at this concert – Short 15 or 20 minute improvisations by Sub Units of the entire ensemble followed by an hour long improvisation with everyone. The entire run of performances was released on download/CD and is available both as a 25 CD set and individual double CD sets of each performance. The Evil Clown Album page for the box set is evilclown.rocks/lofosu-boxset/ which contains links to bandcamp, YouTube and other web content.

Also, between 2016 and 2019, the Leap of Faith Orchestra performed six Graphic Scores composed by PEK with the orchestra size as large as 25. The vision of the overall Evil Clown project is to create an extremely broad universe of sound and to realize music which transforms into widely different sonorities within a single performance. The full Leap of Faith Orchestra performing a PEK frame notation score is the most complete implementation of that vision. The large ensemble size (15 to 25 performers) and the details provided in the score directing the improvisation allowed us to create a story through a huge number of controlled textures over the 75 minute duration of the works. See the Evil Clown website: evilclown.rocks/lofo-graphic-scores/.

So, Evil Clown’s projects have been working for many years on the very interesting and difficult aesthetic problem of large ensemble free improvisation. Free improvisation is typically performed by smaller ensembles (duos to quartets). Larger ensemble size combined with a broad-palette approach where most of the players play many different instruments allow us to construct a journey through a series of highly varied sonorities of the duration of the work. This ensemble is comprised of seasoned improvisors from the Evil Clown Roster who are all very experienced at large ensemble broad palette free improvisation. I’m expecting a stellar concert in this wonderful space.

Performers:
Reeds: PEK, Bonnie Kane, Michael Caglianone, Victor Signore, Dennis Livingston
Brass: Bob Moores, Eric Dahlman, Vance Provey, John Fugarino, Duane Reed
Piano: Eric Zinman
Bass: Scott Samenfeld
Drums: John Loggia