For the first time ever, Heisenberg Uncertainty Players (HUP) – which is a new music ensemble with jazz big band instrumentation that is quickly gaining a reputation for being one of Chicago’s most exciting and adventurous ensembles – is entering the studio to record an album (Gradient) of all original music by founder/director/composer John Dorhauer. HUP’s music is eclectic and accessible, and it melds elements of jazz, pop, classical, metal, Latin, R&B, and avant garde into a unique amalgamation that will excite and unite previously disconnected audiences.
Featured compositions will include The Basketball Suite, which is a four-movement postmodern pop composition inspired by different aspects of basketball that pays homage to and playfully implodes conventional classical and pop forms, and Dorhauer’s arrangement of the first movement of Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 3, which creatively adapts this dense piece by adding elements of jazz, metal, and reggae. These compositions and others will allow HUP to invite fans of jazz, pop, Classical, and metal music as well as basketball to join their small yet passionate community of new music lovers.
Gradient will be professionally recorded, mixed, and mastered at Rax Trax in Chicago. The recording will take place on August 4 and 5, 2019, with the goal being to have the record available for release in early 2020. We will also pursue distribution and promotion for the release through a label and promotion company as a way of gaining exposure and building our audience.
We are offering some amazing and unique awards to incentivize you to invest in this project. All rewards come with a digital download of Gradient that will be sent to you prior to its release, but you can also book the band for a private performance, commission John to arrange a song of your choice for the band, and even receive a recipe book with John’s favorite baking recipes that he makes for HUP.
HUP is well-established in Chicago’s music scene: they currently hold monthly residencies at Phyllis’ Musical Inn and Chicago Magic Lounge, they have played numerous prestigious venues ranging from The Jazz Showcase to the Logan Center for the Arts, they have been featured on WGN-TV three times, and they were nominated in Chicago Reader’s Best of Chicago 2017 poll for Best Jazz Band. In 2017, they premiered We Tear Down Our Coliseums, which is a nine-movement genre-bending multimedia suite in which each movement is written as an homage to a demolished baseball stadium; in 2018, they premiered The Abbey Road Project, which presents John’s original arrangements of every song from the classic Beatles album; and in 2019, they premiered HUP the Third, which is a collaborative performance with Riverside-Brookfield High School in which they perform John’s arrangements of movements from the third symphonies of Mahler, Beethoven, and Brahms.
This will be a vital project because it will create a high-caliber recording of HUP’s music and John’s writing that they can sell and promote to various media outlets, utilize their unique repertoire to forge connections with new communities, and provide a tangible opportunity for HUP to market their music and their brand.
For more information or to hear more of HUP’s music, visit huplayers.com.
