Andy Bresnan is a multi-instrumentalist, arranger, composer, and producer, and for fourteen years has been the Artistic Director of the Big Mess Orchestra and Big Mess Cabaret. After his first band Junior Mints faded away in 1983 he played with the Ben Vaughn Combo, Baby Flamehead, and more recently with Butterfly Joe. Baby Flamehead put out an album and toured extensively in the U.S. and Canada, playing on CBC's "Brave New Waves" and on NPR's "Mountain Stage". Andy also produced CDs by Big Mess (1997) and Butterfly Joe (2000). Along the way, he has sung and played guitar, bass, drums, accordion, tuba, trombone, trumpet, flute, and sundry instruments with groups ranging from symphony orchestras to the mummers' fancy brigades, and from Ted Puss and the Stompers to Benny and the Vildechayas.
During the same twenty years or so, he co-founded the Big Mess Theater company with college pal Greg Giovanni. Starting with accordion, trumpet and tuba, the Big Mess Orchestra grew steadily, providing on-the-fly education in composition and arranging, until the group reached the point of putting on a full-scale original operetta (1992's "Lucy" at the Painted Bride). The Cabaret started in 1991. Big Mess put on cabarets at the Trocadero at 10th and Arch St. for the last twelve years with what is now a 16-piece ensemble and a rotating who's who of Philadelphia singers, actors, poets, dancers, fire-breathers, and more than a few performers whose category of talents and abilities remains obscure.
During that time Andy was also commissioned to compose and perform music with choreographers including Asimina Chremos, Karen Bamonte, Melanie Stewart, and SCRAP performance group, as well as being hired for his first film score.
In the year leading up to the birth of his son John, between producing 2 cabarets and writing and performing the score to "Poe's Own Twilight Zone" with Thaddeus Phillips at Christ Church, he orchestrated his Big Mess Theme for none other than the Philadelphia Orchestra, when Big Mess Cabaret hosted the Orchestra's 2003 Halloween do at the Kimmell Center. Since John's arrival Andy has been a stay-at-home dad, and has played bass with Philadelphia alt-country duo She Haw, and composed a tuba/baritone saxophone duet for Katherine Livingston's dance performance/lecture on the human nervous system. The release of the long-awaited second album from the Big Mess Orchestra, "Have Yourself" was officially celebrated at Big Mess' Christmas Cabaret "Operation Yuletide Freedom" in December, 2004.
In June, Andy moved his family to Emmaus, PA, where his wife is in residency in family medicine.