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Juneau musicians honoring prog-rock with "Tom Sawyer" concert

Thu, Feb 9, 2006@1:14PM | comments removed/disabled

[Juneau's progressive force]

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This Friday, Feb. 10, at the Alaska Native Brotherhood Hall on West Willoughby Avenue in Juneau, Alaska a group of local musicians will put on a concert tribute to progressive rock entitled, appropriately, Tom Sawyer. From the article.

Last August, Andy Engstrom and Ward F. Ward started thinking about paying homage to some of the bands that inspired them to play music ... such as Rush, Kansas and Dream Theater, so-called "progressive" performance-oriented music that was technically challenging and not necessarily played to death on mainstream radio.

They rounded up a handful of like-minded musicians ... and started rehearsing in September.

The name they chose for the show: "Tom Sawyer," in honor of the song from the 1981 Rush album "Moving Pictures."...

... In the spirit of the over-the-top compositions, the show will include an elaborate multimedia stage show. Patrick Race at Lucid Reverie is putting together some movie clips and images to go with the show and will screen them on 12-by-12-foot video screens on both sides of the amplifier stacks. Two hand-held camera operators will be recording additional live video of the crowd. ... The videos will be sold later this year to support those projects. ...

... "Ward and I wanted to hand-pick musicians that weren't only composers in the same style that we liked, but were also master musicians," Engstrom said. "And yes, the material is extremely difficult and very challenging, but we wanted something that was going to be rewarding for the audience to hear and see and also rewarding for ourselves to put together. There's really no time for anybody to relax in any of these songs."

This almost makes me want to live in Alaska! I'm definitely going to try to get my hands on some video from this show when it becomes available.

Rush covers to be included in the show are Tom sawyer and Spirit of Radio. They'll also be doing Dream Theater's Pull Me Under and Another Day; Kansas's Carry on my Wayward Son; Ozzy's Perry Mason and Diary of a Madman; Saga's On the Loose; and Led Zeppelin's Kashmir.

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