Deacon Otis Arts

Short Bio: Mad Myth Science is an electro acoustic quartet sustained throughout the pandemic as a collaborative effort to keep the music going in our isolation. Our goal is to share this cumulative work with audiences through a recorded album and live performances in 2022.

Long Project Description: 

Mad Myth Science is the creative convergence of Molly Jones (saxophones, flutes), Julian Terrell Otis (voice), Wilson Tanner Smith (cello), and Ben Zucker (trumpet, vibraphone). Our collective experience goes deep into several scenes of Chicago arts and music, including engagements with contemporary composed music, jazz, free improvisation, sound art, theater and dance, and the creative music tradition of the local AACM. All of this makes its way back into our performances, which we call “spontaneous compositions and rituals for an unstable world”.

The great Muhal Richard Abrams once imparted that ‘If you take care of the music, the music will take care of you.’ In these uncertain and upside down times I struggled to find the ground. I could not rationalize the convergence of the pandemic, racial unrest, and economic uncertainty into an optimistic path forward. I froze and spiraled, but the path that I had laid out led me back to the music. It wasn’t self care, but the collaborative care of my musical community that encouraged me to stay in the music. Mad Myth Science is one of those communities that has sustained me, and the music is a reflection of our ability to care for each other while creating the sound world we want to live in. Almost every week, we would play together over livestreams and explore how we could keep creating together for the sheer joy of it. Many of those sessions were recorded, and we have a significant archive of music telling the story of our growth and overcoming the circumstances of the pandemic. The energy we have cultivated over the past 18 months has matured into an intimate vehicle of expression for us as a collaborative and we seek to share this work with our community through the production of a recorded album and live performances in the midwest and nationally. 

The music will be a hybrid of chamber music, free improvisation, electroacoustics, and Creative Music. This album project, which will debut next year, reflects our accumulated layers of history during this period, and would also display a fuller picture of our group’s abilities as composers, sound artists and improvisers. Winter and Spring 2022, brings intensive in-studio time to devise new concepts, compositions, and incorporate our back archive into a release pending with Chicago Improvised Music Catalog. Project funds would be used to secure a recording residency at the Fine Arts Building Recording Studios and cover rehearsal space, recording, mixing and mastering services. The creation of high-quality documentation and distribution will support our booking live performances in the summer and fall of 2022 in Chicago and beyond. 

The formation of this collective has been a positive experience and led to new opportunities that we couldn’t have reached on our own. It is an example of community care by creating music in spite of the circumstances. The energy that we cultivate in the collective radiates throughout our individual practices and only encourages us on our path as emerging professional musicians, composers and scholars. 

Available For Bookings Pending Scheduling in US & Internationally