Osterville library adopts Cape band

2022-09-17 03:37:25 By : Mr. calvin xu

OSTERVILLE — As far as Osterville Village Library Executive Director Cyndy Cotton knows, there is no library “not anywhere, on Cape Cod or beyond” that has a “house band.”

Earlier this summer, the Cape Cod Conservatory Big Band found a new home and rehearsal space at the Osterville library on Wianno Avenue.

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The typically quiet and sedate atmosphere is now occasionally shaken up by the sounds of big band jazz and swing time standards with the band as the library’s latest adoptee.

With the shutdowns and confusion of the COVID-19 pandemic and a change in its relationship with the Cape Symphony and Conservatory, the band found itself in need a new space.

Tyler Newcomb, who has been the big band’s director for the last 34 years, met with Mike Albaugh, executive director of the Cape Symphony. The symphony and conservatory merged in 2010. The band has been previously treated as a class and rehearsed at the Conservatory's location on Lyannough Road.

Albaugh said the band was not officially a part of the Cape Symphony’s program.

“It was his band,” Albaugh said. “It was a band of adults, not kids, in a program.”

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So there was no contractual connection between Newcomb’s band and the Cape Symphony.

Albaugh, however, told Newcomb he could rehearse at the symphony’s site, but would have to pay a fee to rent the space because the band was considered an outside entity.

With no budget and playing only charity events, Newcomb said, “That’s it. We’ll go someplace else.”

Then this past spring, Cotton called Newcomb to ask him to get the band ready to open the library’s summer concert series as it has done for the last 15 years or more.

“I told her we’d love to play the concert, but we’ve got no place to rehearse. So she said, ’Why not play here?” Newcomb said.

“He said he didn’t have a place to rehearse, and we had a big meeting place,” Cotton said.

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The band got together for two rehearsals a few weeks before a concert on July 14 and opened the Kirkman Trust Fund Concert Series as usual.

“And we sounded better than ever,” Newcomb said.

Cape Cod Conservatory Big Band is a 22-piece band with two vocalists comprised of many local musicians and a few from off Cape.

“We have players from Provincetown to Taunton,” Newcomb said.

And they are young and old; at one time the ages ranged from 16 to 98.

Band members include Dabney Peters, a trombone player and is a junior in high school; Dan Anthony, music director at the St. Francis School in Hyannis; and Abby Pollock, a music teacher in Provincetown.

One of the older players is a real pro, trumpeter Joe Casano who played with Stan Kenton and Woody Herman.

Danielle DeCastro is in her second year at the University of Long Island and is one of the featured vocalists. She has great range and sings “New York, New York” an octave higher than normal.

Dennis Flaherty, the other vocalist, “is a dead ringer for Sinatra’s voice,” singing “Come Fly With Me” Newcomb said.

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Cotton said she has known Newcomb for many years and was a big fan when he played first trumpet with another swing-style jazz band, the Gringos, which was very popular on Cape Cod and all over the country during the 1970s.

Cotton has always loved music and, in fact, had married the trumpeter from the Maynard Ferguson big band, so she was very pleased to adopt the band.

“It was a match made in heaven. We love music and we love the arts,” Cotton said.

Now the band is also looking for a new name since it is no longer a part of the conservatory.

Newcomb has suggested number of possible names one of which is the Ty Newcomb Big Band at the Osterville Village Library.

Newcomb said he is very happy with the band’s new home. The rehearsal room is large with good acoustics and a lot of storage space.

“It is, by far, better (than at the conservatory). We used to rehearse in the lobby and when classes let out the people would be walking between the players,” he said.

However, providing adopting unlikely partners is not something new for the library.

In 2018, AMIE Bakery was building a new facility and at the end of the year its lease ran out and the landlord did not grant an extension.

So Cotton, who knew Amie Smith, the owner of Amie Bakery, proposed the library adopt a bakery and coffee shop.

From Jan. 1, 2019, until that following June, Smith was able to continue to serve her customers and keep her staff employed in tough times, selling coffee and some pastries from the library’s small service kitchen.

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 “I’ve known Cyndy a long time, and she wanted a bakery presence in the library for a long time, so it was a natural,” Smith said.

Even now, Cotton has promoted the bakery in the library. Just recently, Cotton and Smith collaborated to host a guest chef from Chicago who did a baking demonstration and a book promotion.

“We look forward to doing things like that in the future,” Smith said.

The library also offers shelter to residents during winter storms when the power goes down. The library has a generator and Cotton said she has extended library hours so people, even their pets, can come in to get warm.

“I’ve made toast and coffee for people, at times,” she said.

 “Cyndy has been a big supporter and a good friend to us,” Smith said. “She’s a great marketer and promoter and she really cares about the community.”

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