Musical Alternatives

The making of Ocean was for Cutting an odyssey of epic proportions – a massive undertaking requiring seven years of composing, arranging, researching, fundraising, recording and mixing. Being determined to rival the quality of a major label project on an unsigned individual’s resources, and using artists on both sides of the Atlantic to achieve just the right marriage of sounds on each track meant working at a pace that was often frustratingly slow, and prone to technical snafus. Finding the money to fund such productions meant applying for grants and looking for sponsors, finishing one more song each time a grant was awarded or a patron gave her a loan. Research was also a central component in the development of the production. Digging up obscure lyrics from the Irish oral tradition, Latin phrases from medieval alchemical texts, and forgotten melodies from the manuscripts of turn-of-the-century folk music collectors was all in a day’s work for Cutting, who is also an ethnomusicologist at the Archive of Folk Culture at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C.

Cutting’s graduate training in ethnographic fieldwork came in handy when facing the logistical and technical challenges of recording in remote and sight-unseen locations across the U.K. Getting the job done meant hauling luggage, instruments, and fifty pounds of analog tape reels up and down stairwells in busy urban airports and rail stations, and pleading with officials not to X-ray the master tapes. Rural settings provided yet other challenges: on one recording trip, power outages caused by a flash thunderstorm lost ‘perfect takes’ of a vocal she’d been working all day to capture, and hailstones pelted her and her gear as she sank up to her ankles in liquefied manure while making her way across a singer’s farm in remotest Shropshire. Local fauna made their appearances, too. Sheep bleating outside the windows halted recording activities in one tiny rural studio, and the antique pedal organ tracks recorded in a Herefordshire studio all had to be scrapped because of the cooing of pigeons who had taken up residence inside the instrument.

Ocean is the product of Cutting’s longtime fascination with the intersection of music, mythology, psychology, and spirituality; a soul-searching work motivated equally by personal and world events. In late 1995, the breakup of The New St. George, the death of a close friend, and several other painful events precipitated for Cutting a several-year period of introspection and withdrawal from the music world. When she began to make music again, her sound had changed – the crisp edges of British folk-rock giving way to a more liquid sound palette and freer-flowing song structures. Cutting started recording demos in her studio again, dubbing her new project “Ocean,” after the new sound. She had no particular timeline, and the music was her own private balm. But the news that her lead singer Grace Griffith had been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease gave Cutting a reason to shift into a higher gear. Says Cutting, “The subtitle of the CD is ‘Songs for the Night Sea Journey.’ With terrorism continuing to rule the headlines, we are still in the middle of that dark passage. On top of these terrifying world events, people are still having to cope with challenges and losses in their personal lives. But music can help tell a story of overcoming. I hope that the material I’ve written and arranged for Ocean will provide an uplifting soundtrack for traveling hopefully on these changing seas.”

Before it was even released, the rough mixes from Ocean had already garnered Cutting a string of awards and accolades, including a Media Arts Fellowship from her county of residence, a Governer’s Arts Award in Composition from the state of Maryland, a Contemporary Folk Instrumentalist of the Year WAMMIE at the Washington Area Music Awards, and a rare 800-word spread in Billboard magazine for the release of “Forgiveness,” a single from the album. She has already been offered distribution for the album in Canada, the U.K. and Japan. Having achieved national-level success as mastermind of The New St. George’s High Tea, Cutting now stands poised to gain an audience for Ocean that stretches far beyond U.S. shores. [www.jennifercutting.com]