“Yet in baseball and jazz the game remains the same: Swing for the fences, play with verve, take chances, be a team, exploit surprises. Using these strategies, the Dorhauers and Heisenberg Uncertainty Players are on track to scoring big, successful seasons, maybe eventual pennants.” – Downbeat

 

We Tear Down Our Coliseums is a nine-movement multimedia creation by two brothers inspired by the historical, architectural, and – sadly – disposable aspects of baseball stadiums. Each movement is written as an homage to a demolished stadium, with music written by John Dorhauer (director and composer for Heisenberg Uncertainty Players) and visual art by Adam Dorhauer (a writer and visual artist from Cleveland who writes for The Hardball Times). Though the music was written for jazz big band and uses elements of jazz, it transcends genre boundaries, sharing more in common with a symphonic tone poem than a traditional work for big band. And while the paintings often do portray the given stadiums, they offer unique and insightful commentary on each stadium’s place in history. Coliseums is a vital artistic creation because it presents unique perspectives on a culturally vibrant and relevant topic, it unites art and sport in a way that will appeal to fans of both, it challenges conventions of what a big band can do, and it allows two adventurous artists to pursue their crafts and take creative risks related to a strong passion of theirs.

The premiere for Coliseums took place on Saturday, April 1, 2017 in Elmhurst College’s Mill Theater, the evening before MLB’s 2017 Opening Night.

DownBeat Swing for the Fences: New Suite Fuses Jazz, Baseball
The Leader ‘Coliseums’ Honors History of Baseball
Chicago Tonight 10 Things to Do This Weekend: March 30 – April 2