Biography
Philosophy
Selected Resume
Desert Island Discs

Jennifer Cutting

Bio by Scott Miller

JENNIFER CUTTING is a composer, arranger, producer, bandleader, and multi-instrumentalist known for her award-winning original songs, innovative settings for traditional British & Celtic music, and imaginative production. Embodying the archetype of the maestro, she creates and directs music for groups of musicians to bring to life, fueled by the desire to engage and showcase the greatest qualities of every artist with whom she works. As Creative Director of SunSign, her own international production company, Cutting is a curious blend of explorer, diplomat, craftsman and mystic. After first receiving the inspiration, she then conquers the daunting details and logistics of transatlantic recording sessions in order to produce and record her vision with a global cast of contemporary and traditional music’s leading lights.

The granddaughter of NBC Symphony conductor Ernest Cutting and great-granddaughter of composer George Hoffman, Cutting was born into a unique, if unorthodox, family of writers, concert musicians, and visual artists who renounced their worldly goods to study Indian philosophy. The last remaining family member died when she was young, leaving her to grow up in a secluded Hindu monastery in South Florida under the care of two scholar/priests from India. Under rigid discipline in an ashram surrounded by mango plantations, Jennifer was steeped in Anglo-Indian music and customs, and did not hear her Western name again until she was 18. There she absorbed a stream of Eastern tradition that has profoundly influenced her writing.

Cutting’s rich compositions are equally shaped by the wellspring of traditional British and Celtic song, a passion inspired in large part by her association with British folk revival leader A.L. Lloyd. As an ethnomusicology graduate student at the University of London, she had the good fortune to become Lloyd’s last and youngest protégé, soaking up the same blend of scholarship and joy in performance that he had also imparted to members of Fairport Convention and Steeleye Span. Cutting's melodic, tradition-inflected songs have been praised by Billboard, winning the U.S.A.’s most prestigious national awards, including First Prize at the Merle Watson Memorial Festival, and American Songwriter Magazine’s “Song of the Year.”

A pioneering bandleader and performer whose work in nurturing an Electric Folk revival in America earned her a chapter in the new Oxford University Press book Electric Folk: Revival and Transformation of English Traditional Music, Cutting won 15 WAMMIES (Washington Area Music Awards) for her work directing and performing with British folk-rock group The New St. George, including Best Contemporary Folk Recording and Best Traditional Folk Recording for her 1994 brainchild CD High Tea (Folk Era Records).

Continuing to innovate and develop the acoustic/electric alchemy, Cutting’s latest work on Women in Folk, recently released on Park Records in the U.K. and continental Europe, has garnered overwhelmingly positive reviews and a generous spread in Billboard magazine.

Cutting has her own studio in Takoma Park, Maryland, just outside of Washington D.C. Her favorite movie is, of course, Spinal Tap.

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PHILOSOPHY, ETC.

“I believe in the Holy Trinity -- Imagination, Craftsmanship, and Beauty. And I believe that God is in the details. I’ll work on a song for a year, if that’s what it takes. Or build an album in my head for eight years, if that’s what it takes (as with High Tea and Ocean...). I have a lot of patience for these details -- they are what makes a recording endure the test of time, and offer the listener something new each time they’re played.  I’m willing to go the distance, because my recordings are what I’m leaving behind on the planet!”

“I get visions that won’t go away until they're given form. I start by seeing a musical idea skeletally, and then fleshing it out in stages, often quite elaborately. I haven't always appreciated my more unconventional ways of verbal and musical thinking, but the farther along I go, the more I value this capacity, and the bolder I get about expressing it.

“Writing is being in an altered state. I can only describe it as a state of grace -- and at the same time a state of swimming in terrible, delicious chaos. I’ve never known anything else like it, it’s so overpowering when inspiration comes. When I’m on a writing jag, I don’t eat. I don’t sleep. I don’t bathe (which is why it’s a good thing that I don’t write every day!).  I feel so connected, so ‘in love,’ I don’t want to do anything else but try to perfect the song. I’m completely unaware of the passage of time. Afterwards, I’m exhausted, but there is always a beautiful baby to show for it.  Being in that state and ‘receiving’ is proof positive to me of a dimension beyond the five senses we know.”

“I love performing, but recording is definitely my favorite artistic medium, maybe because it doesn’t vanish into thin air!  It's a way to capture and preserve elusive moments of great beauty.  That’s why I started my own production company, SunSign. I think of myself as a soundscape architect -- I try to get the structures and textures from my imagination out onto the recorded sound canvas, with the help of many amazingly gifted people who all add their own genius into the mix. Creating a song or an arrangement is a lot like putting up a building or designing a landscape, except that my materials are instruments and voices.  Hearing it build layer by layer is the ultimate thrill.”

“Every record I make will probably be radically different -- I need to keep reinventing myself, and, artistically, I’m a cluster of split personalities! But my first allegiance is to my imagination.”

“My role models are master soundweavers like Mike Oldfield, Danny Elfman, and Alan Parsons. With them, it’s about a song, but it’s also about a sound.  The way they realize the basic material, the way they imagine an elaborate new sound universe for it, thrills me beyond words. So I know that my path in life is to create songs, and beyond that, to create whole sonic worlds for them. In the New St. George, I did it most often with traditional songs -- took basic traditional melodies and created alternate dimensions for them. Now, in the Ocean Orchestra and in my own production company,  I’m doing it with my own songs as well, and it’s the ultimate fulfilling work.”

“I understand now that we have an obligation to use the gifts we’re given; both for our own well being, and for that of others. My life’s lesson is to learn to become a more and more open and clearer channel for receiving the ideas, and a more and more worthy vessel.  I think that writing music is an exercise in learning to listen to things that are beyond the five senses we know. As William Blake said, ‘Imagination is evidence of the Divine.’”

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JENNIFER CUTTING - A SELECTED MUSIC RESUMÉ

PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE

1995 to present - Independent producer, SunSign Productions (specializing in original transatlantic productions of folk, electric/electronic  folk and folk-rock)

2002 to present - Pre-concert discussion moderator, Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center, University of Maryland

1985 to 1995 - Bandleader, producer, songwriter, and arranger for British folk-rock group The New St. George (musical direction, management, marketing, publicity, agenting, administration, accounting, and long-range planning).

1987 to present - Ethnomusicologist and Folklife Specialist at the Archive of Folk Culture, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.

Folk Era recording artist

PROFESSIONAL MEMBERSHIPS

Voting Member, National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences
Society for Ethnomusicology
North American Folk Music and Dance Alliance
Songwriters Association of Washington
Washington Area Music Association

HONOURS

Washington Area Music Award (WAMMIE) for Best Contemporary Folk Instrumentalist, 2003

Montgomery County Media Arts Fellow, 2003

Maryland State Arts Council Individual Artist Award in Composition, 2003

Maryland State Arts Council Individual Artist Award in Composition, 1997

First Prize, Chris Austin Songwriting Contest at the Merle Watson Memorial Festival, Wilkesboro, North Carolina, 1996, for Forgiveness

Grand Prize, American Songwriter magazine, 1994, for Unspoken History

Special Achievement Award for Significant Professional Contributions for discographic work at the Library of Congress, 1994

15 Washington Area Music Awards, including Best Contemporary Folk Recording and Best Traditional Folk Recording for The New St. George’s High Tea

ADJUDICATION

Panelist, D.C. Commission on the Arts & Humanities, Folk & Traditional Arts Mini-Grants, 2004

Judge, AFIM  ( Association for Independent Music, formerly NAIRD) Indie Awards
1993, 1995, 1999 - Celtic/British Isles category; 2000 - Contemporary Folk category

Judge, Mid-Atlantic Song Contest, 1995

Panelist, Maryland State Arts Council Grants, 1994

Critiquer, Songwriters Association of Washington Monthly Song Critiques

DISCOGRAPHY

Grace Griffith: “The Sands of Time” on The Sands of Time (Blix Street Records, 2003) Jennifer Cutting - composer, arranger, producer

Jennifer Cutting with Maddy Prior: “Forgiveness” on Women in Folk (Park Records PRKCD62, 2002) composer, arranger, co-producer (w/ John Jennings), keyboards

The New St. George: “Don’t You Go“ on A Celtic Collection (Putumayo World Music PUTU 125, 1996) producer, arranger, accordion, keyboards

The New St. George: “Time to Remember the Poor“ on A Holiday Feast (Hungry for Music HFM 002, 1995) producer, arranger, keyboards

The New St. George: High Tea (Folk Era 1415, 1994) producer, arranger, keyboards and accordions

The New St. George: “Our Captain Cried, All Hands!“ on Capital Acoustics I (Institute of Musical Traditions, 1991) producer, arranger, accordion

PUBLICATIONS

“Bringing in the May: Morris Dancing and Other Springtime Traditions in the James Madison Carpenter and Anthony Grant Barrand Collections.”  (Folklife Center News, Summer 2003, Volume XXV, No. 3) 

American Folk Music and Folklore Recordings: A Selected List. (six editions, 1987 through 1992, Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress).

“Where do Piedmont Blues, Plains Indian Flute Music, Zydeco, Bluegrass, and Klezmer Meet?“ Grammy magazine (National Academy of Recording Arts & Sciences, Inc.) Volume 9 No. 1 (February 1991): p. 32.

Various articles. Folklife Center News (American Folklife Center, Library of Congress, 1989-92).

Various record reviews. Dirty Linen: The Journal of Folk, Electric Folk, Traditional, and World Music (1992).

Biweekly restaurant reviews. The Washington Post (1990-91).

PAPERS AND PANELS

Co-Chair and Moderator, Rocking the Folks: Marketing Anglo-Celtic Folk Rock in North America - 8th Annual North American Folk Music and Dance Alliance , Feb., 1996.

Lecture, From Fol de Rol to Sha Na Na: The Electrification of British Folk Music for Montgomery County Humanities Council (Maryland), April, 1993.

Lecture: Trials and Triumphs of Record Production, for the Association of Recorded Sound Collections, Library of Congress, July 21, 1992.

RADIO AND TELEVISION APPEARANCES

Interviewed as spokesperson for the Library of Congress Archive of Folk Culture in "Save Our History: Save Our Sounds," a documentary produced by and aired on the History Channel, 2003.

Featured guest on BBC’s Folk on Two with Jim Lloyd, broadcast March 23, 1994.

PBS Affiliate NJN TV/Delaware County Arts Council, Arts Along the Delaware River (New St. George live in concert at historic Prallsville Mill in Stockton, NJ; interview footage of Jennifer discussing electric folk).

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JENNIFER’S DESERT ISLAND DISCS

(Favourite albums of all time, in no particular order)

Honourable Mentions:

Album Cuts that Changed My Life: