Jazz, Swing-Housephoole
Phoole's Panharmonium LIVE at Gardens and Gears 2026original

ATTENTION ADVENTURERS! Presenting almost seven hours of music and amusing announcements from Madame Phoole's Panharmonium live at the 2026 Gardens and Gears Steampunk Faire in Milwaukee's beautiful Mitchell Park Domes Horticultural Conservatory! Recorded live on Saturday, 7 March 2026. The 2026 theme was "Modern Wonders of the World," so sounds evoke the Pyramids at Giza, Chichen Itza in Peru, the Great Wall of China, the giant statue of Christ the Redeemer in Brazil, and travel to exotic locales in general, with dashes of bal-musette, vals criollo, tango, and Jazz Manouche, along with plenty of crowd-pleasing Dixieland jazz and Tin-Pan-Alley ragtime piano. The event took place in a giant glass dome, which was connected to two other giant glass domes, each of which contained immersive botanical gardens. The Show Dome, in which Mme. Phoole performed, also housed an exhibit of model trains, the tracks for which wended their way in and out amongst the foliage, so tunes about trains are sprinkled throughout. The cavernous, echoing venue suggests to Madame Phoole a multi-modal station for every kind of steam travel, so the goofy, pseudo-British-dialect announcements interspersed amongst the tunes are themed to H.G. Wells-esque kinds of travel and adventure. Phoole and Tiffany play a lot of Walkabout Mini Golf in virtual reality, so a few of our favorite compositions by Chris Reyman from that game’s soundtrack make cameo appearances. Because the States are still steeping in a very 1933-in-Germany zeitgeist, many 1930s tunes performed by Max Raabe & Palast Orchester are played, along with a too-brief dip into Chap-Hop.