A R T I S T S A R E S O C I E T Y ’ S I M M U N E S Y S T E M
Our mission is to write, record, and perform rock musicals about current issues in order to raise awareness and build a community that will get involved to make the world a better place.
We tell meaningful stories that make people think and call them to action to make a difference. We cater to individuals who enjoy a good story well told and like theatrical productions featuring progressive rock music. Our forward-thinking problem-solving audience puts people over money, they are ordinary people who desire to do extraordinary things.
Madmen and Dreamers is a progressive/art rock band founded by Mark A. Durstewitz and Christine Hull in Pompton Lakes, NJ in 1995. The band formed around the writing and recording of our first project,
The Children of Children, which is the story of one father who refuses to divorce his kids.
We toured The Children of Children throughout the New York City region in venues including Bleecker Street Theatre, Merkin Concert Hall, Silent Planet Fest in Pennsylvania, Staten Island TV, and various events In Washington DC.
The Children of Children was so well received that we decided as a rule, our stories should reflect the zeitgeist. When Children closed at Bleecker Street, it was easy to decide that climate change would be the subject of the next project.
In addition to our rock musicals, we were invited to contribute to other projects. We covered
The Nile for the Santana tribute album
Guitars Dancing in the Light, released by Mellow Records in 2010. We performed a set of our original material for a 9/11 tribute in NYC in 2001 and set the poem
City of Liberty to music, which closed our set. We were asked to write a song for an autism awareness event at a school in New Jersey. After interviewing some of their students, we wrote
Through My Eyes to be performed by the student body.