Podcast 27 - John Ellis and Andy Bragen

This week, I talk with saxophonist John Ellis and playwright Andy Bragen about their newest collaborative work titled Mobro. The Mobro 4000 was a trash barge that traveled internationally looking for a place to dump its contents. John and Andy used this as a jumping off point and wrote a 75 minute through-composed, narrative driven suite of music about the journey. They do their best to tell me how they define this ambitious project. We talk about how Andy uses the metaphors of trash and seagulls in these songs to tell a bigger story and why John decided to work with this many musicians. We find out that the processes of being a creative musician and creative playwright are not that different from each other. Finally, we try to get to the bottom of who actually named the Mobro 4000.

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