< The Queen's Cartoonists: Where jazz meets animation and hints of musical circus

March 24, 20234:37 PM ET

The Queen's Cartoonists: Where jazz meets animation and hints of musical circus

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AILSA CHANG, HOST:

Seeing the members of The Queen's Cartoonists perform live is truly a spectacle. There's jazz, cartoons, a wide range of musical instruments and all kinds of noisemaking props and shenanigans.

JOEL PIERSON: At our shows, we play in synchronization with the films being projected on stage. So we take old classic cartoons and contemporary animated films, and we perform the soundtracks live while you get to watch the films. We also do a lot of the sound effects from those films, and there's elements of comedy and sort of like a musical circus.

CHANG: Joel Pierson, a composer and pianist, formed the band in 2014.

PIERSON: And I had a whole list of kind of crazy ideas, and this was the one that I picked - looking for intersection between the golden age of animation and the golden age of jazz.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

PIERSON: When the band goes on tour and sets up on stage, I want it to look like there's 30 people that are going to come out, and then there's only six.

(SOUNDBITE OF YOUTUBE VIDEO, "THE QUEEN'S CARTOONISTS: THE HAUNTED SHIP")

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: Kirby (ph).

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: Cabaret (ph).

PIERSON: One of our favorite films is a 1930 cartoon called "The Haunted Ship." When we recorded it, we start with the credits, playing the original music. There are some sound effects, some whistles and other kind of funny things that happen.

(SOUNDBITE OF SIREN WHISTLE)

PIERSON: Well, the action starts with a cat and a dog flying an airplane...

(SOUNDBITE OF THE QUEEN'S CARTOONISTS' "THE HAUNTED SHIP"

PIERSON: ...And we have the instruments in the band re-creating what's happening on screen. The drummer plays a bunch of percussion when the cat plays the airplane...

(SOUNDBITE OF RHYTHMIC WOODBLOCK PLAYING)

PIERSON: ...Like a drum set.

(SOUNDBITE OF THE QUEEN'S CARTOONISTS' "THE HAUNTED SHIP")

PIERSON: Then the cat starts playing a trumpet, so our trumpet player plays the trumpet line.

(SOUNDBITE OF TRUMPET PLAYING)

PIERSON: Then they run into a storm, so we do this, like, thunder and lightning sounds.

(SOUNDBITE OF THE QUEEN'S CARTOONISTS' "THE HAUNTED SHIP")

PIERSON: And so the cat and the dog are rowing their airplane like a boat in the rain, and one gets hit by lightning. And so then we make a bunch of noises, you know, like the lightning sounds.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "THE HAUNTED SHIP")

GREG HAMMONTREE: Yow (ph). Yow-wow (ph), yow-wow.

PIERSON: And eventually, a bolt of lightning chases the cat and the dog through the air before ultimately getting into a fight inside of a cloud, and they sink into the ocean.

(SOUNDBITE OF THE QUEEN'S CARTOONISTS' "THE HAUNTED SHIP")

PIERSON: The band's influences are jazz composers and jazz musicians, but a lot of those musicians worked with classical music as well.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

PIERSON: I had this idea to maybe take Mozart's "Requiem" and recompose it for a jazz ensemble. And Mozart had a very interesting sense of humor, so I - we're sort of trying to use maybe some things that he would have thought were funny as a jumping-off point.

(SOUNDBITE OF XYLOPHONE PLAYING)

PIERSON: The main goal of the band is to get people into the concert hall that wouldn't usually go. So a lot of people would hear the term jazz band or jazz concert and say, oh, that's not really for me. I don't like that music. So we're using the angle of cartoons and animated films to kind of bridge that gap, to say, well, maybe you don't listen to a lot of jazz, but you like cartoons, right? And you can come, and you can see Popeye the Sailor Man and Betty Boop and all these characters. And we're accompanying them, and we're, you know, doing the sound effects and doing all this stuff to create this fun concert. That's a way to get people in.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

CHANG: That was Joel Pierson of The Queen's Cartoonists. Their latest album will be out this spring.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

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