Update on HAND the Band!

11/14/2015

The rock band HAND, whose current Hamden Hall roots extend back more than four decades, all the way to Switzerland in the 1970s, and continue growing to this day, has added yet another exciting chapter to its current life with the recent recording of the band's third album. It is tentatively entitled Dream to ride, and it was recording in August in Waterford, Conn. It’s slated for release on the European boutique label, Golden Pavilion Records, in Spring 2016.

HAND was originally formed in 1970 by songwriter and singer Marc Osborne, Spanish teacher at Hamden Hall for the past 24 years. Marc was a teenager attending boarding school in Switzerland. Signed to a Swiss label at the time, HAND made the record known as Everybody's Own. That album continued, unbeknownst to Marc and other original members, to gather, for decades, a modest but devoted fan base across two continents, and was celebrated with a 40th anniversary, special 2012 vinyl reissue that quickly sold out. "Everybody's Own" has been hailed as "a seminal album" of the period.

Motivated by a cadre of his students, and by another original band mate, Nick Zoullas, Marc reconstituted the band in 2013 with entirely new music, and musicians drawn from Hamden Hall's exceptionally talented student musicians, and one faculty member. HAND's line-up currently includes, in addition to Marc and Nick: Nate Hill 2015; Waylon Chang 2016; Tyler Bunton 2016; Nick Marcaldi (ECA graduate 2014); Mariel Yaghsizian 2013; and Hamden Hall English teacher Arnie Sabatelli.

Since June of 2013, HAND has had an exceptional run of exciting events to celebrate. It started with the release of the first album in the band's newly reformed incarnation, 2014's The other side of the world, which brought HAND back into its current highly creative new phase on Golden Pavilion Records. In July of 2014, the entire band traveled to Florence, Italy to record its second album, little heartaches, released in the spring of 2015. That album was praised in the venerable British music magazine Record Collector as " a whirling, impassioned update of Bob Dylan's Rolling Thunder Revue's temper and textures", awarding it four stars. A third album of entirely original music is now being completed, mixed, and mastered. A few months ago, National Public Radio (NPR) broadcast a 20-minute feature on HAND, produced, written and narrated by Lori Mack, producer of NPR's Faith Middleton show.

The past year has seen HAND perform in various local venues, such as the Space, the Cherry Blossom Festival on Wooster Square, Stonely Burnham School, and most recently on the opening day of New Haven's prestigious International Festival of Arts and Ideas, in June of 2015. The band has also performed a benefit concert for the Arts at Hamden Hall's Taylor Performing Arts Center and played at the second annual Hamden Hall music festival, Mayfest.

The making of Dream to ride in early August of 2015was the result of months of rehearsals and writing of new music. Mariel Yaghsizian, HAND's female vocalist and granddaughter of Jazz great Dave Brubeck, and lyricist Iola Brubeck, co-wrote most of the songs on the previous and current album with Marc, proving to be an exceptionally gifted lyricist. "Mariel has led me to new sources of musical inspiration,” Marc said, "and we have developed an intuition and synchronicity that have taken our music in unexpected and thrilling directions. Our friendship and musical collaboration have revealed areas of my creativity I had thought were long extinguished." The mixing of generations has continued to be a hallmark of the band, and it has been a particular source of joy to develop warm friendships and collaborations across the traditional generational divides. HAND exemplifies that when musicians join together, all barriers commonly erected to separate people by age fall by the wayside, and musicians of all ages become equals, erasing such differences.

Dream to Ride has a very eclectic sound, ranging from the articulate, poetic drive and funk associated with Classic Rock figures like Bob Dylan, The Rolling Stones, or Neil Young, to the subtle, minimalist sounds of the Jazz-infused Bossa Nova of Antonio Carlos Jobim and Stan Getz. The new music includes a Folk based ballad penned by master guitarist Arnie Sabatelli, strong melodies in a Country vein, but also some toughness more easily associated with Miles Davis' jazz-rock fusions of the ‘70s. HAND has developed a sound of its own which absorbs and transforms such influences, making the music fresh, new, and personal.

The new record was made over a period of four exhilarating but grueling 10-hour days at the new state of the art recording studio, Power Station, part of the Sonalysts company of Waterford. It was brilliantly engineered by Eric Dawson Tate, whose astounding knowledge, both technical and musical, was invaluable to the band as it refined each song, take after take, over the many hours. Everyone in the band, as well as Golden Pavilion CEO Antonio Barreiros, feels that HAND's newest music is also its best to date. As Marc puts it, "It is a special challenge to keep a band like ours together because we are all otherwise engaged in our lives as students, teachers and professionals. It makes it all the more amazing that we have achieved a cohesion and uniqueness that can rival any other bands out there."

Marc reports that since Hand's last recordings for Dream to Ride in August, the band has lost alumni bassist Nate Hill 2015 to Georgia Tech; drummer Nick Morcaldi 2014 to a music school in Danbury; and vocalist/lyricist Mariel Yaghsizian 2013, who will be pursuing other priorities in her life and will be away from Connecticut. “Even so,” Marc said, “the band continues to work and move forward, with a focus on original music. It is currently re-imagining and reinventing itself, and may soon have a new female vocalist in the group. The fluid nature of a multi generational group is a part of Hand's unique history and its regenerative strength.”

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Update on HAND the Band!