never enough hope; open end 1-29-2005

toby summerfield wrote a piece for 16 of his friends - and gave it the name never enough hope. he's really put some serious effort into this project and i think it is good because of it. the piece is a long form, with several sections of a slow-build nature. most of it is in time with dense rhtymic parts fleshed out by drums & bass, 2 guitars and 4 vibraphones. add saxophone and string quartets and you'v egot yourself a large group. toby set up the show at the open end, which was a good thing as we could comfortably fit in there all together - also, just the atmosphere at open end, with a skyline view and super high ceilings give shows an aspect you can't get at other places. so, who was in the band? these folk:

Saxophones: Dan Bennett, Stuart Bogie, Colin Stetson, Aram Shelton
Vibes: Jason Adasiewicz, Dan Sylvester, Tim Daisy, TIm Brown
Strings: Amy Cimini, Kevin Davis, Brian Dibblee, Dina Maccabee
Rhythm: Frank Rosaly, Nathaniel Braddock, Joshua Tillinghast, Jason Ajemian

we had one day for a full rehearsal, which was kind of slow moving, as there are lots of things to have to practice with a group of that size: the instrument groups & the entire band need to be together - hearing where your part fits in can be tough. it was a good time - about a third of the group came in from out of town - from the east and west coast -

the show went off well - dragons 1976 played an opening set - a warm up for a tour we're starting on wednesday. while we were playing i was working with the room - you can play very softly and still fill the place up because there's so much natural reverb. and it seems unless the music is going through a PA, it won't wash out.
when never enough hope played, it felt good - in the rehearsal we kind of just jumped into the sections, but for the performance, toby let the piece take it's time building and receding, bringing in people for solos and sectional hits - keeping the piece changing by allowing different voices to come through. i think the piece worked well - we'll find out for sure with the recording....