{"id":115135,"date":"2025-06-12T14:48:10","date_gmt":"2025-06-12T18:48:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/?p=115135"},"modified":"2025-06-12T14:48:10","modified_gmt":"2025-06-12T18:48:10","slug":"interview-brampton-composer-musician-mechanical-organ-enthusiast-friendly-rich-marsella-talks-birds-marsville","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/2025\/06\/12\/interview-brampton-composer-musician-mechanical-organ-enthusiast-friendly-rich-marsella-talks-birds-marsville\/","title":{"rendered":"INTERVIEW | Brampton Composer\/Musician\/Mechanical Organ Enthusiast Friendly Rich Marsella Talks About The Birds Of Marsville"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Composer
Composer and musician Friendly Rich Marsella (Photo courtesy of the artist)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Brampton native and eclectic musician and composer Friendly Rich Marsella is about to release his 17th album titled The Birds of Marsville. It will be the second release for indie label We Are Busy Bodies, and will be available in both physical and digital download form on August 15.<\/p>\n

The premise of the album is this: a kind of field guide to birds of the town of Marsville in musical and artistic form. The primary instrument is a mechanical street organ, fashioned by Henk Degraauw.<\/p>\n

The twist \u2014 Marsville is a fictional town, full of fictional but fascinating birds.<\/p>\n

Friendly Rich Marsella is a unique figure in the Toronto area music ecosystem. He\u2019s been active as a performing and recording artist since the mid 1990s, producing 17 albums \u2014 including the current one \u2014 in a variety of genres that include punk-vaudeville fusion, and what he calls a \u201cwayward\u201d, yet complete, rendition of Mussorgsky’s\u00a0Pictures At An Exhibition.<\/p>\n

We asked him about The Birds of Marsville.<\/p>\n

The Birds of Marsville<\/h2>\n

An 18th-century Hungo-Italian anthropologist and field researcher by the name of C. Smalloochi creates bird songs from the unique species found on the lost island of Marsville.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s the fiction. The reality is that the field guide is a collaboration between Marsella and multidisciplinary artist David C. Hannan that, along with the music, features pantings of birds like The Honker, The Bum Bum, and The School Shooters.<\/p>\n

Musically, the album offers microtonality, influences of artists like Harry Partch and Ennio Morricone, and more, blended in and out of each other with a carnivalesque sensibility. The music premiered live at the 2021 Guelph Jazz Festival.<\/p>\n

Composed and produced by Marsella, the album features a roster of top tier Toronto musicians that includes, in addition to multi-instrumentalist Marsella, Gregory Oh on piano and organ, Nichol S. Robertson on electric guitar, Ed Reifel on orchestral percussion, and Tom Richards on trombone and tuba.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s an interesting orchestral mix made even more interesting by one of Marsella\u2019s instruments \u2014 and an acknowledged \u201cobsession\u201d.<\/p>\n

Friendly Rich Marsella<\/h2>\n

Along with his recording career, Marsella has also composed music for the Tom Green Show, and toured through both North America and Europe with his band Lollipop People, performing at Fusion Festival in Germany, the Balkan Fever Festival and Danube Festival in Vienna, among others. Lollipop People has performed at Canadian festivals, including Guelph Jazz Festival, Festival International de Musique Actuelle de Victoriaville, Halifax Jazz Festival, Newfoundland Music on the Rocks and at the Western Front in Vancouver.<\/p>\n

He founded and ran the Brampton Indie Arts Festival for several years. Marsella has produced radio essays and documentaries for CBC Radio One, and his work has been commissioned by ensembles such as Toca Loca and Continuum Contemporary Music.<\/p>\n

Marsella completed his PhD in Music Education from the University of Toronto in 2021, and his doctoral research was on musical playgrounds as a vehicle for community development. Marsella also studied composition under Gary Kulesha, R. Murray Schafer and Alexander Rapaport.<\/p>\n

\"Album
Album cover for The Birds of Marsville by Friendly Rich Marsella (Courtesy of the artist)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Friendly Rich Marsella: The Interview<\/h3>\n

\u201cBasically, I\u2019ve been into mechanical street organs for a good 15, 20 years,\u201d Rich begins. Henk Degraauw, 88, is a friend who\u2019s also based in Brampton. \u201cHe built this mechanical street organ, and a few years back, he gifted it to me.\u201d<\/p>\n

Marsella describes it as midi driven, and featuring more than 100 pipes. \u201cThis guy can make an accordion play without a human behind it,\u201d he says. \u201cI\u2019ve gotta start writing for this thing. It\u2019s too beautiful a piece of art.\u201d It was his first reaction. \u201cIt just sounds so magical.\u201d<\/p>\n

When it came to repertoire, though, Henk was surprised. The usual music for the instrument falls into the beer barrel polka category. Rich was composing contemporary music.<\/p>\n

\u201cI played the piece for him, and he almost fell over,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

The Album<\/h3>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve always wanted to start working on a larger project that\u2019s a series of different pieces,\u201d Marsella says.<\/p>\n

The suite, which includes 76 fictional bird portraits, easily fit into a cycle of works. It\u2019s also just the first of his planned projects that will involve the lost island of Marsville.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is just one of the [works] I\u2019m doing for this imaginary island.\u201d<\/p>\n

The name is composed of a compilation of his name and his wife\u2019s last name, and it resembles nowhere on earth in particular. \u201cIt\u2019s all in my head,\u201d he says. \u201cI thought it was an open ended concept enough to allow for future [experiments].\u201d<\/p>\n