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 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.
credits
released October 19, 2018
Performed by Mucca Pazza
Composed by Andy Deitrich/ ASCAP/100 Units Publishing
Freaks: Amanda Bailey (violin), Nora Barton (cello), Ronnie Kuller (accordion), Charlie Malave (guitar), Jim Drake (mandolin)
Percussion: Larry Beers, Andy Deitrich, Rick Kubes, Brent Roman, John Carroll
Saxophones: Maria Elena Hernandez (tenor), David E. Smith (alto), Garrick Smith (bari), Airan Wright (bari)
Trombones: Nick Broste, Melissa McNeal, Neil Brown
Trumpets: Justin Amolsch, Susie Inverso, Sam Johnson, Nick Siegel
Tuba: Mike Hogg, Jim Langenberg
Produced by Andy Deitrich & Ronnie Kuller at Hidden Wave
Mastered by Carl Saff / Saff Mastering
Special thanks to Will Maclean
Mucca Pazza is the marching band that thinks it’s a rock ’n roll band. Their music skips from genre to unnameable genre, never settling in one place for long, but held together by the band's unmistakable sound and irresistible energy.