Videos of Darcy James Argue's Secret Society.

Vancouver-born, Brooklyn-based composer-bandleader Darcy James Argue directs Secret Society, a powerful and well-stocked ensemble (New York Times) featuring his ambitious, sprawling, mesmerizing music (Montreal Gazette). Secret Society is an 18-piece steampunk bigband that envisions an alternative musical history, one in which the dance orchestras that ruled the Swing Era never went extinct, but continued to evolve with the times, remaining a vital part of the musical landscape straight through the present day. Argues compositions bring together a big, broad musical vocabulary (New York Times), one which invokes Duke Ellington and minimalism and Tortoise and Funkadelic and Elliott Carter and much else besides melding into one floating, shifting, dodging music (zoilus.com).