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Heisenberg Uncertainty Players

Chicago based big band playing original music

About Me

Heisenberg Uncertainty Players (HUP) “are something of a Chicago institution, as well as being a distinct anomaly – a 17-piece big band specialising in original compositions and arrangements by the band members, who have managed to survive and thrive since 2011 playing regular shows around their home town.” (Jazz Views) Formed in 2011 and playing exclusively original compositions and arrangements from founder and director John Dorhauer, HUP has performed at venues like The Jazz Showcase, Wire, Fulton Street Collective, Martyrs’, Fitzgerald’s Night Club, The Logan Center for the Arts, Reggie’s, and WGN-TV, and they were nominated for Best Jazz Band in Chicago Reader’s Best of Chicago 2017 and 2019 Polls.

Recent projects for HUP include performances of original arrangements of The Beatles’ Abbey Road and Led Zeppelin’s Houses of the Holy albums in their entireties; HUP the Third, in which they perform original arrangements of movements from the third symphonies of Beethoven, Brahms, and Mahler; We Tear Down Our Coliseums, which is a nine-movement multimedia suite in which each movement is written as an homage to a baseball stadium that has been destroyed; and a collaboration with hip-hop collective Hitmakuzz Productions.

HUP currently holds monthly residencies at Phyllis’ Musical Inn and Chicago Magic Lounge.

Their brand new 2020 release, Gradient, features nine original compositions and one arrangement that incorporate HUP’s unique blend of jazz, rock, classical, R&B, and pop music. The album is built around The Basketball Suite, which is a four-movement composition written in a postmodern-pop style in which each movement is inspired by a different aspect of the modern NBA. Also featured on Gradient is Dorhauer’s arrangement of the first movement of Gustav Mahler’s Third Symphony, which adapts the original for jazz big band with elements of heavy metal and reggae. Chicago Jazz Magazine says “Gradient is delightful and intriguing. What it lacks in thematic cohesiveness it makes up for in vibrant diversity and charismatic talent. Thanks in great part to Dorhauer’s inventive leadership and stimulating writing, the album showcases the orchestra as both an energetic and electrifying whole as well as a hotbed for individual virtuosity.”