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CD Reviews: The Digital Folk Life. Org
Jennifer Cutting's Ocean Orchestra, Ocean: Songs for the Night Sea Journey
(Sunsign Records CD 2004: www.jennifercutting.com
How to respond to this recording? First of all, it comes trailing credentials to kill for; Jennifer Cutting is an ethnomusicologist with the Library of Congress, and she has such luminaries as Maddy Prior (vocalist) and Peter Knight (fiddler), from Steeleye Span, to help, along with Dave Mattacks, drummer for Fairport Convention, to rock this collage of sea-inspired tunes, all structured around a Joseph Campbell monomyth of departure-and-return voyage. That should give you some sense of the musical and intellectual underpinnings of the sound you get when you start the first set, "Call of the Siren," (vocals by Polly Bolton), tap your feet along to the Irish jigs that follow ("Out on the Ocean/Rolling Waves"), with button accordion by Jennifer Cutting herself, bouzouki and electric guitar by Zan MacLeod, bodhran by Myron Bretholz, Uilleann pipes by Troy Donockley, fiddle by Peter Knight; and then make the transition to Grace Griffith's soaring vocals on "The Gladdest Breeze," an old Irish ballad resurrected for this outing by Jennifer, the "auteur" of this entire CD.
"Auteur" is not a term you normally associate with traditional music, being more a term for the collaborative art of film - Godard etc. - but once you think of what Paddy Moloney did to traditional Irish music with the Chieftains, it's not such a bad term for what Jennifer Cutting has managed to do with her cast of dozens of expert musicians for this outing. Framed, as noted, along a Jungian or Campbellian myth of departure and return, it moves, in its middle section (Separation and Reunion), primarily via the vocals of Grace Griffith ("My Grief on the Sea") or Jennifer Cutting herself (a spoken-word incantation for ritual purification, "Dissolving," linked to an instrumental piece, "King Neptune"), or that equally regal voice of Lisa Moscatiello, on "The Sands of Time" (with lovely harmonies by Grace Griffith), before returning to an instrumental trio, "Sleep on the Deep," featuring Jennifer Cutting on grand piano, Troy Donockley on a lovely low whistle, and, again, Peter Knight, on violin and octave violin.
Grace Griffith returns with what some may regard as the CD's highlight, "Song for the Night Sea Journey," subtitled "Prayer for Safekeeping," altho it must contend for vocal honors with what comes next, Maddy Prior's exultant release, "Forgiveness" (words & music by Jennifer Cutting), Maddy wailing along on "Fall upon your knees and beg forgiveness/Cast your bitter stones upon the ground/ Cross the seven seas to lend forgiveness/ All eternity will sing the sound….
The end of "the journey without distance," the homecoming of the heroine from her night sea journey, is an exultant choric finale, led by the Bulgarian diva Tatiana Sarbinska and the women's group Slaveya, crossing - again - Troy Donockley's Uilleann pipes and Zan MacLeod's bouzouki and electric guitar, in a pair of wild reels, the traditional "Woman of the House" and Jennifer Cutting's own composition, "Neptune Reel," and then a fade into awed silence, before a postlude, Polly Bolton returning in a Bach piece, with harmonies from Gabriel Yacoub, and finally, "The Siren's Farewell," with Grace Griffith, once more, together with Sue Richards' sweeping Celtic harp, backed up by Jennifer Cutting's keyboard and samples of the ocean tides in Thailand, drawing the listener along and, finally, out of the spell.
And that's just one fellow traveler's reading of this suite, in hopes of enticing you to pick up this CD for yourself. If you are engaged in or have come thro your own night sea journey, I think you will find this musical setting of the experience well worth the sitting down and listening to, sweeping you along in its running flow, ebb and flow. It's been in the CD player in this household since it arrived, and many thanks to Jennifer Cutting and her Ocean Orchestra - and guests - for the experience.
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