Grand Hallway with the Seattle Rock Orchestra & Perkins School Choir ::: photo by Abbey Simmons

It has always seemed to me, the crux of orchestral pop is you rarely have the orchestra to fulfill even your genre’s name, much less the potential of such an immense sound. With eight full-time members (and about 16 instruments between them), Grand Hallway was already much more successful in fulfilling the promise of orchestral pop than most who undertake it. However, having seen the band around town over the past couple of years, I couldn’t help but long to hear the band’s sound fully realized, with a slew of strings and horns accompanying. That longing was abated Saturday night during two sold-out shows at the Triple Door, where Tomo Nakayama’s songs and the sweeping landscapes he painted on Promenade came to life with a full orchestra and childrens’ choir.

It took hearing those songs in their grandest form to appreciate the small intricacies and simplicity that makes Grand Hallway such a delight. At the heart of it all, in the cradling of complex orchestration, shone Tomo’s songs. Where poetic tunes like “Raindrops” and “Blessed Be, Honey Bee” left little doubt that if Tomo and Grand Hallway are determined to write the perfect song one day, they will. Having heard them with the able bows of the Seattle Rock Orchestra and the soaring sound I always longed for, I am even more eager to return to just Tomo and the seven other gifted musicians that make up Grand Hallway. I left the Triple Door satiated, but now longing for the small-scale symphony of pedal steel, accordion, violin, guitar, and Grand Hallway’s multitude of multi-instrumentalists, for their own internal choir, and those songs, the potential of which are as immense as any orchestra.

Grand Hallway is making their way down the West Coast and east to Austin this week, without the orchestra in tow. Clearly, I still highly recommend you check them out:

3/12/10 - DOUG FIR, Portland, OR
3/13/10 - THE BOUQUET, Boise, Idaho
3/14/10 - KILBY COURT, Salt Lake City, Utah
3/15/10 - HI DIVE, Denver, Colorado
3/16/10 - LOW SPIRITS, Albuquerque, New Mexico
3/18/10 - SXSW: ST DAVID’S HISTORIC SANCTUARY, Austin, Texas
3/19/10 - SXSW: VORTEX THEATER (Acoustic set) Austin, Texas
3/20/10 - SXSW: BEAUTY BAR (Seattle Party) Austin, Texas
3/22/10 - THE PERCOLATOR, El Paso, Texas
3/23/10 - THE RED ROOM, Tucson, AZ
3/25/10 - SILVERLAKE LOUNGE, Los Angeles, California

See more videos and photos from Grand Hallway with the Seattle Rock Orchestra:

PLUS: More photos of Grand Hallway and Mighty Tiger on Flickr