Mucca Pazza

Mucca Pazza drummer Andy Deitrich’s free-meter free-form musical free falls are composed in a near-vacuum as he daydreams across our beautiful city, and his “War of Amusements” is the perfect soundtrack for skipping towards the autumn shenanigans we’re all longing for. A pair of sousaphones is joined by the high reeds in a lilting march, and then the rest of Mucca Pazza bursts onto the scene with a singularly joyful melody that feels like a serenade to fun itself. Even when the mood occasionally darkens, the listener can’t help but be captivated by this lush retelling of the carnival at dusk; careening from attraction to attraction, going for an off-kilter carousel ride before wandering off.

Mucca Pazza is an interdisciplinary instrumental music and performance ensemble based in Chicago, where it has grown into a treasured cultural institution. Mucca Pazza's music is through-composed by its members especially for the band's eclectic instrumentation, in which the timbres of a traditional marching band (drumline, brass, winds, glockenspiel) meld with unexpected electric guitars, a violin and cello, and an accordion, of all things! Trick or Treat is a short and sweet short-term time capsule - the result of Mucca Pazza spending a weekend in late September 2016 in Electrical Audio’s Studio A. You can hear the shape of that gorgeously idiosyncratic live room in the full and luscious resonance of the horns, in the clarity and focus of the drumline, the asymmetrical ceiling perfectly encapsulating the unity and individuality of the miscellaneous 26-piece ensemble. But in a departure for Mucca Pazza, Trick or Treat starts out surprisingly spare. Not a single horn is heard for the first two and a half minutes of “The Orange Show,” a sanguine love-letter to American soul music that adventures through a spare sonic landscape to unexpected modalities, but ends with a full complement of epic brass (composed by electric mandolinist emeritus Gary Kalar). In the lush, inviting, and wistful “Rest on Muffin Street,” by saxophonist David E. Smith, the winds and brass are front and center from the start, overlapping each other with Escher-like intricacy. Smith’s signature interlocking countermelodies take a darker turn in “Mr. Spider Goes Home to Spiderland,” an anthem for anyone who can’t go on, but goes on anyway. Trick or Treat ends in “Snare Bath,” a metaphysical spell cast by the drummers meant to guide the listener back into the real world safe and only slightly changed - let the soothing sound of multiple snare drums wash over you as you enter a dreamlike, meditative state. Remember: if you don’t like the licorice the neighbors gave you, you can always trade it with your brother. Like a heavy pillowcase of hard-earned Halloween candy, Trick or Treat holds something for everyone.

Mucca Pazza is an interdisciplinary instrumental music and performance ensemble based in Chicago, where it has grown into a treasured cultural institution. Mucca Pazza's music is through-composed by its members especially for the band's eclectic instrumentation, in which the timbres of a traditional marching band (drumline, brass, winds, glockenspiel) meld with unexpected electric guitars, a violin and cello, and an accordion, of all things! Trick or Treat is a short and sweet short-term time capsule - the result of Mucca Pazza spending a weekend in late September 2016 in Electrical Audio’s Studio A. You can hear the shape of that gorgeously idiosyncratic live room in the full and luscious resonance of the horns, in the clarity and focus of the drumline, the asymmetrical ceiling perfectly encapsulating the unity and individuality of the miscellaneous 26-piece ensemble. But in a departure for Mucca Pazza, Trick or Treat starts out surprisingly spare. Not a single horn is heard for the first two and a half minutes of “The Orange Show,” a sanguine love-letter to American soul music that adventures through a spare sonic landscape to unexpected modalities, but ends with a full complement of epic brass (composed by electric mandolinist emeritus Gary Kalar). In the lush, inviting, and wistful “Rest on Muffin Street,” by saxophonist David E. Smith, the winds and brass are front and center from the start, overlapping each other with Escher-like intricacy. Smith’s signature interlocking countermelodies take a darker turn in “Mr. Spider Goes Home to Spiderland,” an anthem for anyone who can’t go on, but goes on anyway. Trick or Treat ends in “Snare Bath,” a metaphysical spell cast by the drummers meant to guide the listener back into the real world safe and only slightly changed - let the soothing sound of multiple snare drums wash over you as you enter a dreamlike, meditative state. Remember: if you don’t like the licorice the neighbors gave you, you can always trade it with your brother. Like a heavy pillowcase of hard-earned Halloween candy, Trick or Treat holds something for everyone.

Mucca Pazza is an interdisciplinary instrumental music and performance ensemble in Chicago, where it has grown into a treasured cultural institution. Mucca Pazza's music is through-composed and arranged by its members especially for the band's eclectic instrumentation, in which the timbres of a traditional marching band (drum line, brass, winds, glockenspiel) meld with unexpected electric guitars, a violin and cello, and an accordion, of all things. Composer Andy Deitrich grew up listening to Rush, Yes and Weather Report, making him one of the nerdiest members of Chicago's nerdiest marching band. You can clearly make out the prog-rock influences in Deitrich's “Barbarous Relic”: the 7/4 time signature, the unusual - at times unsettling - tonal flavor, the insistently unwieldy syncopations - and they all somehow add up to an inexplicably catchy and compelling piece of music. The listener is invited on an exhilarating interdimensional journey by the forceful brass melodies, eerie string interludes, and parallel-universe tonalities, while sudden moments of utter calm evoke the infinite tranquility of deep space. “Barbarous Relic” is firmly rooted within Mucca Pazza's adventurous oeuvre, while also boldly going where no marching band has gone before. The band spent eight years practicing counting to seven before they were ready to record this piece.

Monster Tango by Mucca Pazza