By the good graces of the invisible hand of fate, a lucky roll of the dice, and a deal made with the devil himself, Paul Fonfara was awarded a 2022 Creative Support Grant from the MN State Arts Board to compose music for HONK! styled brass bands, then to make the fully notated scores freely available for anyone who wants to play them. Here they are! Think Duke Ellington in an episode of Twin Peaks, the Johnny Quest theme played by Tom Waits, Ennio Morricone drinking cheap wine and a hint of Goran Bregovic tea thrown in. We play tangos, mariachi, klezmer, Balkans brass, and vintage big band jazz sounds. Some tunes are thinkers and some are shakers.
Members of Minneapolis' own Brass Messengers and other local horn luminaries recorded the pieces live as a demo, and all of the sheet music is available here as pdfs. These demos are pretty rough and honestly not all that well rehearsed (got to love deadlines), so we're planning to do it right down the road and record in a hi-fi studio someday., Colonel Mustard’s Mechanical Orchestra has since become it’s own operation having performed in the Twin Cities at Turf Club with Balkan Bump, a run of monthly dates at Palmer’s, the Cedar Cultural Center, Mixed Blood Theater and the 331.
All the pieces have a full score and individual parts. There are also contingency parts in Eb, Bb, and C for varied instrumentation and for times when somebody can’t make the gig.. Sibelius files of the full score are available as well if that helps to make for new interpretations. Please, please play these tunes and send recordings. I'm thinking of this as long term collaborative process where folks can share and develop tunes over time, so we would love to hear where they go!
