Never Enough Hope

Toby Summerfield

On lineup alone, Never Enough Hope certainly looks like a jazz juggernaut. Chicago free jazz heavyweights like bassist Jason Ajemian, drummer Frank Rosaly and saxophonist Dave Rempis anchor the massive 20-piece ensemble, replete with string section, dual drummers and a battalion of winds. But Toby Summerfield, a guitarist/bassist who only conducts here, is already known for infusing rock’s minimalist ethos into the squall of improvised music. And he turns this jazz-centric collection of players into a concise and magnificently rude rock band.

Taking its title from the formal term for “gifting” economies (think open-source software), Summerfield uses a strict—and occasionally severe— compositional pen. Sure, cynics and Tortoise haters may say this is the kind of jazz that rock fans typically like, with its spacey allusions to Bernard Herrmann soundtracks and Frank Zappa psych workouts. But look past the reliance on rock’s rah-rah 4/4 time and Summerfield packs in some surprisingly fresh ideas. Opening track “The Banner,” for one, carries an Afrobeat shimmy with some deliriously disjunct horns, both paying homage to Steve Reich and Reich’s own influences in West Africa, all in one fell swoop.

Certainly, some of the barriers Never Enough Hope transgresses—between avant-garde jazz, mainstream jazz and rock—have been blurred before (see MC5, Ken Vandermark). But thanks to Chicago thinkers like Summerfield, they’re blurring more creatively than ever.

Never Enough Hope plays Friday 29 and Saturday 1 at AV-aerie.