Putting the puzzle together: Purdue Jazz Band tackles “Jigsaw”

Suggest to composer David Cutler that ancient Gregorian chants could spice up a jazz project, and he just might do it. Anything and everything inspires this young composer whose 1,000 piece jazz puzzle known as “Jigsaw” gets its world premiere with the Purdue Jazz Band on Friday, Nov. 21.

The piece highlights a concert that features three bands – the Purdue Jazz Band, Lab Jazz Band and Concert Jazz Band – as well as the premiere of a student written work, “Playful Cats” by pianist Ryan Hicks, a senior from Fort Wayne.

It is set for 8 p.m. Friday, Nov. 21, in Loeb Playhouse of the Purdue Stewart Center. Admission is free.
Although composers don’t always attend premieres, Cutler will not only attend but will be part of the Nov. 21 show. “Jigsaw” contains a piano interlude that gives the composer a chance to improvise on his favorite instrument.

Known for his sense of theatricality, Cutler has the reputation of being a highly visual pianist who’s all over the keyboard. “He’s quite a performer,” says M.T. “Mo” Trout, director of all three bands. “I’m sure he’s going to take us on quite a journey.”

The journey that brought Cutler and “Jigsaw” to Purdue started in the Blue Ridge mountains of North Carolina last summer when Trout met Cutler at the Brevard Summer Music Festival. The two played a combo version of “Jigsaw” together at the Festival.

“It was about a 300-piece puzzle then” Trout estimates, and he found it so fascinating he immediately commissioned Cutler to expand it for big band.

“Now, it’s more like a 1,000 piece puzzle, Trout says. “It’s been fun. Cutler doesn’t write like anyone else. He has all these ideas in his head.”

Among its bits and pieces, “Jigsaw” boasts East European rhythms, reminding jazz fans of Dave Brubeck’s “Blue Rondo A La Turk,” and klezmer moments, and even moments when it sounds like the staccato background of a television newsroom.

“Cutler has a fresh approach to harmony and instrumental voicing so you get unusual timbres. It’s very imaginative all the way through,” he says. “There’s one spot where you think of a CNN newsroom type sound. Another place in the musical score has the indication ‘ethnic’ written above it. At that point the first saxophone switches to clarinet and plays up high and kind of out of tune with a wild and free klezmer-like sound.”
In yet another spot, Cutler calls for the trombones to be “brassy and nasty.”

When you look at a jigsaw puzzle, there are lots of different shapes that don’t seem to fit together. “The first time we looked at this piece it made no sense,” Trout says. “Rather than four or eight beat patterns, there were 13-beat patterns and with the uneven distribution of beats it made it hard to figure out where the downbeat was…..and chord changes were very challenging because they didn’t follow traditional formats.”
Jigsaw “is very sophisticated on one hand with its modern music techniques. On the other hand Cutler just likes to have a lot of fun, and prove that sophisticated music doesn’t have to be inaccessible to audiences,” Trout says.

There’s “so many disparate sounds, rhythm, harmonies and melody fragments in ‘Jigsaw,’ but when you hear them all together it makes all kinds of sense.”

Cutler says all the unique character of his tunes emanates naturally from his view of music.” I don’t consider myself just a jazz, or a classical, or a rock musician. As I was growing up I just heard many different types of music and it all became a single music to me,” Cutler says. “This music is my musical experience whether it’s tango or bebop or Chopin, Gregorian chants or country and western. I like it all.”

Unique among composers, Cutler, a professor of musicianship at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, PA, will write for any kind of ensemble. “Jigsaw” began its life 10 years ago as a piece for an electronic ensemble. His most noted works include “Vango Tan Gogh,” an offbeat, post-modern quintet for violin, accordion, piano, bass, and drums that’s a far cry from a traditional tango, but it does attempt to capture the passion found in the intense Argentinean dance style; and “Kartoon Music for the Kriminally Insane and Socially Delinquent” which reflects on the extremely violent yet delightfully quirky moments of Loony Tunes.

Coming back to “Jigsaw,” and turning it into a piece for big band, was a challenge he couldn’t pass up. It’s more straight forward than some of his compositions, admits Cutler who is a fan of CNN, by the way, and included that puzzle bit on purpose. “It’s called ‘Jigsaw’ because it is kind of like a puzzle to put together, a little tricky but fun.”

Cutler will return to Purdue’s campus in January 2004 for the Purdue Jazz Festival where he will be a featured performer and conduct clinics.

The Nov. 21 concert has several other highlights. The Purdue Jazz Band will perform Count Basie’s “Avenue C” as it was originally recorded, and will present a Latin interpretation of the Billy Strayhorn classic “Take the A Train.” Purdue alum Chet Bauch created the adaptation called “Jose Takes Another Train.”

The Concert Jazz Band’s portion of the event features Charles Mingus’ “Moanin,” and Lab Jazz Band highlights include “Festival de Ritmo” and an old-fashioned tune in a jazz arrangement, the “Trolley Song.”
The Purdue Jazz Band’s next concert will be in combination with American Music Review, “Holiday Cheer & All That Jazz” on Dec. 12 in Loeb Playhouse.