Chaos Magick
His standing seven-piece: violin and cello, long-form composition and dynamic interplay, with Grammy-winning violinist Zach Brock.
Chaos Magick is the large ensemble under Brandon’s own name: strings, long-form composition, and dynamic interplay. It is the project where the writing gets room to run: pieces built to develop over their full length rather than to state a head and blow on it.
The band is a seven-piece: the long-running trio with Ben Tweedt on piano, a string pair of Grammy-winning violinist Zach Brock and cellist Michael G. Ronstadt, and Patrick Duke Graney on percussion alongside the kit. Violin and cello mean the strings are a real section rather than a colour, and a percussionist working next to the drummer is an orchestration decision, not a doubled part. Both are there because the writing asks for them.
In January 2026 they played Memorial Hall in Over-the-Rhine for Jazz at the Memo. The venue described the program as “colorful compositions that toe the line between precision and spontaneity,” and put the pitch this way:
Chaos Magick takes the listener on a vibrant journey to be remembered — a cosmic path guided by a dynamic and expressive band playing colorful compositions that toe the line between precision and spontaneity.
The rhythmic writing underneath it is the thing Brandon has spent the longest on:
One of my HUGE musical passions is a rhythmic language that I’ve developed based on several musical influences: the strict subdivisions of Frank Zappa’s art music, the flowing rubato of impressionist Classical music, the dynamic interplay of jazz music, the structural subtleties of Indian Classical music, and the natural rhythms of human speech and movement.
The rhythm section is the same one documented across a decade of records (Matt Wiles on bass and Jeff Mellott on drums), most recently on the trio record Trust Fall (2024).