BIOGRAPHY
DAVID CUTLER is a multi-dimensional composer who listens voraciously to
a colossal range of musical styles. His enormously eclectic
output
reflects this large musical world, with a vocabulary that ranges from
beautiful, lyrical, tonal realms to unusual sounds, dissonant clashes,
and bizarre juxtapositions. Though many of his compositions refer
to
the sounds that surround him, they are far from simple
imitations.
Instead, these works are impressions of the music he hears, or
commentary on them. In other words, they are indications of what
happens to the music after it is processed by Cutler’s unconventional
and deeply philosophical mind. For example, a piano trio entitled
Trunk Music, combines the sorrow of a chanson by Renaissance composer
Josquin de Prez (1440-1521) with the joy of an original Irish
reel. He
has a setting of Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto for violin and avant
garde jazz ensemble, in which the band literally destroys the music and
upstages the soloist, and a fast 11/8 Kopanitza round dance in which
the ensemble breaks into song in Bulgarian while the pianist plays a
Cuban montuno pattern. Kartoon Music for the Kriminally Insane
and
Socially Delinquent reflects on the extremely violent yet delightfully
quirky moments of Loony Tunes, while the orchestral tour de force Under
the Big Top sets the scene for one of the most imaginative, extreme,
and hypothetical circuses ever produced (certainly in Cutler’s own
mind). Cutler is not afraid to use humor in his music, but other
works
are intensely serious, such as Chestnut Branches in the Court, a choral
cycle dealing with the Holocaust. All of his music attempts to
connect
with the people who listen, though much of it pushes musical and
performance boundaries, aiming to challenge as well as delight.
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Cutler’s
concert compositions, which have inspired audiences throughout North
America, Europe, and Asia, have been commissioned and performed by
ensembles and artists such as the Alabama Symphony Orchestra, Classical
Orchestra of Milan, Repertory Symphony Orchestra, LAVIE Singers, Korean
Chamber Ensemble, Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble, New Century Saxophone
Quartet, harpist Jung, saxophonists Joe Lulloff and Jim Houlik, and
pianist David Allen Wehr. His jazz compositions and arrangements
have been presented by Nancy Wilson, Joe Henderson, Benny Golson, Kenny
Wheeler, the Airmen of Note Air Force Big Band, New York Symphonic Jazz
Orchestra, North Carolina Repertory Jazz Orchestra, the Jazz Surge,
Eastman Studio Orchestra, and many college jazz ensembles. In
2005, he won the Sammy Nestico Award and the Millennium Arts Society's
International Competition for Composers. In 2006, he will serve
composition residencies at the Visby International Centre for
Composition in Gotland, Sweden, Pontificia Universidad Javeriana, in
Bogota Colombia, and the Asian Pacific Performance Exchange in Los
Angeles, CA, where he will work closely with American and Asian
musicians, dancers, theatre artists, and puppeteers. His music
has often interfaced with dance, film, actors, costumes, stage design,
and visual artists.
In addition to composing and arranging, Cutler is active as a pianist,
conductor, writer, and educator. His style of jazz piano playing
is as wide ranging as his compositions, spanning such styles as stride
and bebop to elements far beyond the traditional jazz vocabulary.
As a classical pianist he has focused his efforts on the music of
contemporary and American composers. Always an advocate of new
music, he has conducted many large and chamber ensembles, including
over 20 premiers. In 2002, he became a contributing author to
Jazz Styles, eighth edition, the top selling jazz history textbook in
the country, published by Prentice-Hall, and he is presently working on
an orchestration text for the same publisher. Cutler studied
piano at the University of Miami (BM), composition at the Hochschule
für Musik in Vienna, Austria, jazz arranging and composition at
the Eastman School of Music (MM), and composition at Indiana University
(DM). He was chair of the composition program at the Brevard
Summer Music Festival (2000-2004), and has served on the faculty of
Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, PA since 2000. For more
information, please visit www.trunkmusic.org.
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