Garden of Klōns tests whether a band can change hardware and keep its identity

Garden of Klōns premiered at REDCAT on October 12, 2024, on a double bill with the Kris Davis Trio. The official credit was exact: Lehman on alto saxophone and effects pedals, Smythe on augmented piano, and Pinson on drum set and sensory percussion. With no bassist, low frequency, pulse and harmonic weight had to be negotiated among piano, processed alto and drums rather than assigned to a dedicated bass chair. [2][3]

The following year made flexibility visible. Sam First presented Lehman, Smythe and electric bassist Jermaine Paul without a drummer on July 25. Minaret’s September 24 Los Angeles bill restored Pinson alongside Paul for a quartet; three days later, Seattle’s Goodbye Look listed the original bass-less trio. UC San Diego then closed a West Coast tour on October 5 with Lehman, Smythe, Paul and Pinson. These are documented snapshots, not a complete engagement history, but they establish that trio and quartet versions coexisted. [4][5][6][7]

The 2026 Sam First configuration makes another controlled change. Lehman and Smythe remain the compositional and timbral center found in every documented bill reviewed here. Tordini enters the electric-bass role previously occupied by Paul, while Porter takes an augmented drum-set role related in name—but not necessarily in technology—to Pinson’s sensory-percussion chair. The project keeps its four-part spectrum while replacing the entire rhythm team heard in UC San Diego’s archive. [1][7][9]

Lehman and Smythe’s public collaboration predates Garden of Klōns by nearly ten years. International Contemporary Ensemble’s official film identifies “Dialogues at the Margin I” as a world premiere at Abrons Arts Center on February 28, 2015, with only Lehman on saxophone and Smythe on piano. The 38-minute performance is a valuable baseline: before the current effects labels, their exchange already depended on attack, register, silence and the ability of two linear or percussive gestures to suggest a larger machine. [11][12]

In 2017, Smythe’s A U T O TROPHs made the shared electronic vocabulary explicit. The album credits Smythe with piano, electronics and compositions and places Lehman on “Lucy-A” and “Lucy-B.” In an interview published with the release, Smythe described a live freeze effect triggered through Max and Ableton, and explained that paired sine waves in “Lucy-B” became sources of rhythmic and microtonal information. He named Lehman’s off-kilter rhythm and microtonal spectral harmony as part of the design rather than as a style pasted onto it afterward. [13][14]

That history clarifies why the two names are the project’s constants, but it does not supply a current equipment list. Sam First says “effects” and “augmented piano”; it does not specify software, pedals, preparations, signal routing or whether the 2017 system survives in 2026. The responsible listening stance is to hear the augmentation first and identify the device second, if the musicians choose to explain it at all. [1][14][15]

Lehman’s official Pi Recordings biography connects his recent electro-acoustic work to computer-driven models for improvisation in Max/MSP; it also places that research beside his writing on spectral composition, rhythm cognition and jazz improvisation. Spectral practice begins from sound’s internal frequency content, but in Lehman’s work it has never meant harmony alone. The recurring challenge is to make unfamiliar pitch color coexist with pulse, articulation and improvising musicians. [17][16]

Ex Machina, Lehman’s 2023 album with Frédéric Maurin and the Orchestre National de Jazz, offers the large-ensemble precedent. Pi’s notes describe IRCAM software that reacts to soloists, proposes sonorities and can function as a virtual orchestrator and improvising partner. An official IRCAM film documents the real-time DYCI2 environment; the ONJ’s performance of Lehman’s “Los Angeles Imaginary” lets a listener hear that research inside an acoustic orchestra rather than as a separate electronic track. [18][20][19]

Garden of Klōns relocates that question from orchestra and central software to a compact band whose credits attach processing to individual instruments. The comparison should not be pushed too far: no source says Garden uses Ex Machina’s software. What carries forward is the compositional problem—how transformed sound can participate in timing and orchestration instead of functioning as decorative atmosphere. [18][2][1]

The current roles divide the work cleanly enough to hear consequences. Lehman can project a single alto line and its processed shadow. Smythe can supply harmony, percussion, resonance and electronic sustain from the piano chair. Tordini gives the group a dedicated electric low register that the premiere trio did not have. Porter controls both physical time and whatever additional layer “augmented drum set” creates. Every player can affect density; no player is confined to accompaniment. [1][2]

Tordini is new to this documented Garden lineup, not new to Lehman. Pi Recordings says he has toured and recorded in Lehman-led bands. In a 2023 Jazz Gallery interview, Tordini said he had played in Lehman’s bands “a lot” and called him one of his favorite musicians; he also distinguished rhythmically free writing from later music with more rigorous rhythmic ideas. That history does not predict his Sam First choices, but it means the bass chair is occupied by a musician already familiar with Lehman’s demand for precision and surprise. [21][22]

Porter is the largest documented unknown, and the feature should preserve that fact. Sam First confirms his spelling and augmented drum-set role but publishes no biography or rig diagram on the event page. The original drummer’s importance shows what is at stake: Greg Burk’s REDCAT review heard Pinson’s attack making unusual meters and displaced accents legible while sensory percussion changed drum color. Porter should not be expected to imitate that system; his different solution to the same structural job is one reason this date matters. [1][10]

UC San Diego preserves a 74-minute, 56-second Garden of Klōns concert from October 5, 2025, on its official Vimeo account. Lehman plays alto and electronics, Smythe piano and electronics, Paul electric bass, and Pinson drums and electronics. Because it is the same four-part instrumental design with a different rhythm section, the archive is the most useful public reference for what changes at Sam First—and also the strongest warning against treating personnel as interchangeable. [9][7][8]

The institutional program identifies seven works: Lehman’s “Garden of Klons,” “Orenthal,” “Lest We Forget” and “Meris”; Andrew Hill’s “Siete Ocho”; “House Count,” credited to Lehman and John Coltrane; and Rodgers and Hart’s “You Are Too Beautiful.” That sequence places brand-new project music beside transformed jazz and song sources. It documents one 2025 performance only. Sam First has not published titles for August 26, so none should be promoted as a coming selection. [8][7][1]

Use the archive to separate three variables. First, follow written rhythm before solo order: Burk’s premiere review characterized the early version as composition-forward and heard Pinson clarify asymmetric accents. Second, notice when a sound’s attack belongs to an acoustic gesture but its decay belongs to processing. Third, attend to the electric bass as both pitch and boundary—when it anchors the ensemble, when it doubles a line, and when it leaves harmonic weight to piano or processed alto. Those questions remain valid even when the answers change with Tordini and Porter. [10][9][1]

Sam First lists the concert for Wednesday, August 26, with sets at 7:30 and 9:30 p.m.; a separate ticket is required for each. The event is 21+, and the prices observed on August 11 were $39.20 for the first set and $33.60 for the second, including the venue’s stated 12 percent service fee. The site marked both offers available at that check, but inventory and price are dynamic and should be reconfirmed. [1]

The club sits at 6171 W Century Boulevard, Suite 180, near LAX. Sam First describes itself as an intimate modern-jazz room within a seven-to-ten-minute walk of the terminals and says it normally presents two sets Tuesday through Saturday. That location gives “Los Angeles-based” a specific meaning: the band is not appearing in a festival theater or university lab this time, but in a small club embedded in the airport district’s constant movement. [23][1]

The event page also carries a recording notice and says Sam First live-streams and records its concerts. That is not a guarantee that this performance will receive a free stream, a permanent public video or a record release. It does mean the room treats documentation as part of its practice—an apt setting for a project whose identity can only be understood by comparing versions. [1][23]

Start with “Dialogues at the Margin I.” The official International Contemporary Ensemble film strips the partnership to saxophone and piano and shows how long-form attention can emerge without bass or drums. Then watch UC San Diego’s complete Garden archive, concentrating less on whether a passage sounds electronic than on who controls its beginning, duration and ending. The first reveals the durable pair; the second reveals one already superseded rhythm section. [11][9]

Next, use the official “Los Angeles Imaginary” performance and IRCAM film to understand scale. Ex Machina lets software listen and answer inside a large orchestra; Garden offers four player-centered interfaces in a club. At Sam First, listen for dry and processed versions of the same attack, for bass notes that stabilize or destabilize the harmonic field, and for drum gestures whose audible result extends beyond a struck surface. These are observations to test, not a description of an unheard set. [19][20][18][1]

No official source supplies the August set list, the electronics inventory or a claim that this is the first appearance of the four musicians together. What is verified is more interesting than promotional certainty: a project premiered as an augmented, bass-less trio; it later circulated in several shapes; and its two constant voices now meet a rhythm section with old collaborative knowledge on bass and a genuinely open question at the drums. The performance can answer how much identity a composition carries when its hardware changes. [3][2][22][1]