Waves

Liner Notes

Jennifer Cutting’s OCEAN Orchestra:
 
Accordions, Keyboards, Artistic Director – Jennifer Cutting
Vocals - Lisa Moscatiello and Stephen Winick
Bouzouki, Acoustic & Electric Guitars – Zan McLeod
Highland Bagpipes – Bob Mitchell
Fiddle – Rosie Shipley, Bob Spates, & Andrew Dodds
Electric Bass – Rico Petruccelli
Drums – Robbie Magruder
 
With guests: Pete Kennedy, John Roberts, Clive Gregson, Sue Richards; Washington Revels; Troy Donockley, Polly Bolton, William Pint & Felicia Dale

 
Written, Arranged, and Produced by Jennifer Cutting

1. Waves (Jennifer Cutting)  4:10
2. One April Morning (Traditional)  4:03
3. Rocking the Baby/ The Curlew (Traditional/ Donald MacPherson)  4:33
4. Johnny Has Gone Electric (Jennifer Cutting)  2:57
5. Lark in the Clear Air (Traditional)  3:27
6. Wheel of Fortune (Traditional)  3:47
7. Crane and Tower (Jennifer Cutting)  5:51
8. Leaves of Autumn (Jennifer Cutting)  3:47
9. Song to the Sun (Jennifer Cutting)  4:03
10. Everything Glows [The Curried Haggis] (Jennifer Cutting)  3:34
11. She (Jennifer Cutting)  2:45          
12. Steady As You Go (Jennifer Cutting)  5:08

Download Complete Liner Notes (pdf Booklet)

CD Release Concert March 31 at AMP by Strathmore

***
WAVES CD Release Concert
with special guests The Kennedys!

At AMP by Strathmore
11810 Grand Park Avenue 
North Bethesda, MD 20852 
301.581.5100 
FRIDAY, MARCH 31, 2017
DOORS OPEN 90 MINUTES PRIOR TO THE PERFORMANCE •  SHOW: 8PM
Tickets $20-$30
Tickets and More Info Here!


Food by Ridgewell's

Press Release


Jennifer Cutting’s Ocean Orchestra: Waves Release Date: January 6, 2017 SunSign Records CD2017 
 
“Exciting… On Waves, Jennifer Cutting’s Ocean Orchestra are at the top of their game. They get right inside the spirit of the folk music of the British Isles, unpick it and weave it into a bright new fabric on their own 21st century American loom... Listen up – They’re good!”
 –Fairport Convention’s Simon Nicol 


Radio Promotion/Interviews: Kari Estrin Management & Consulting
P.O. Box 60232, Nashville TN 37206
615.262.0883
kari@kariestrin.com 


On their third album, Waves, Jennifer Cutting’s award-winning ensemble Ocean Orchestra take the listener on a voyage of discovery—through the history of the band and the mystery of human life. Waves is both the new Ocean Orchestra album, and the lost album by Cutting’s previous ensemble, the New St. George, which also featured Ocean’s Lisa Moscatiello and Rico Petruccelli. Waves is about some of the great themes of our lives: the changing seasons, life’s ups and downs, and even the transition called Death. Jennifer’s old folk and Celtic musical influences are all here, especially the British folk-rock of Fairport Convention and Steeleye Span. But you’ll also hear other strands, including 1960s jangle-pop, art-rock, classic southern rock, church organ, Broadway, Bollywood and singer-songwriter. 

Jennifer treats some of life’s great mysteries in these songs; the title song and opener muses on our interconnectedness, drawing on the mystical side of quantum physics to suggest that if we see the best in others, we empower them to become their best. “Leaves of Autumn,” written for singer and beloved friend Grace Griffith as she faced the onset of Parkinson’s disease, is about learning to cope with change. And “Steady as You Go” is a song for saying goodbye to a loved one as they face the ultimate mystery, Death; it’s appropriate for memorial services and celebrations of the life of the departed.  

Other songs meet worldly concerns with joy, humor, and sometimes anger. “Johnny Has Gone Electric” features the characters “Johnny” and “Polly” of so many English folksongs, musing on the consequences of “plugging in.” “Crane and Tower” warns of the dangers of unchecked real estate development, while “Song to the Sun” celebrates nature, and especially the springtime sun. Traditional songs include the English “One April Morning,” which warns young women about false and fickle men, the Scottish “Wheel of Fortune,” which muses about life’s ups and downs with a catchy chorus and a happy ending, and “Lark in the Clear Air,” a soaring Irish love song. Two rip-roaring instrumentals featuring Highland bagpipes, one of them with bhangra beats, round out the selections. In addition to Ocean’s usual all-star lineup including Lisa Moscatiello and Zan McLeod, Waves features guest singers John Roberts and Polly Bolton, and instrumentalists Pete Kennedy, Clive Gregson, and Troy Donockley.  

The recording process for Waves spanned decades. Certain tracks were recorded in the 1990s, some in a stone church in England and others at Bias Studios in Virginia, while still others were recorded more recently at Bias. The rest of the album was tracked, mixed, and mastered at Airshow Takoma by Grammy-winning engineer Charlie Pilzer, a genius at making tracks recorded years apart sound like they belong together. Jennifer began assembling the tracks into this CD with a co-producer, John Jennings [Mary Chapin Carpenter], but lost John to cancer early in the project. 

Jennifer Cutting is a bandleader, composer, instrumentalist, ethnomusicologist, and record producer. Blending the formal training of her Bachelor's and Master's degrees in music with a passion for both traditional and electronic musics, she is one of few women bandleaders working in her genre. Trained by A.L. Lloyd, mentor to the English folk-rock movement, and especially Fairport Convention and Steeleye Span, she creates music in the same tradition, pushing the boundaries of “Celtic,” “Folk” and “Folk-Rock” with the Ocean Orchestra. She has won numerous national-level awards for her recordings and her songwriting, and is head of SunSign, her own international production company in Takoma Park, Maryland, just outside Washington DC.