Visions Jazz Ensemble's "ACROSS THE FIELD"

 VISIONS JAZZ ENSEMBLE FEATURING

TRUMPETER SAM BUTLER & TENOR PLAYER GARRETT FASIG

ACROSS THE FIELD

Released on October 4th on Patois Records

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Although Indiana isn’t usually the first place that comes to mind when considering the finest jazz players in the country, The Visions Jazz Ensemble and their debut album, ACROSS THE FIELD, should make jazz fans take notice. The band comprises Indiana University graduates and is spearheaded by trumpeter SAM BUTLER and tenor saxophonist GARRETT FASIG, both of whom are individually making a name for themselves around the Midwest and beyond.

Butler is also a composer, arranger and educator based in Indianapolis. He has performed with various ensembles including the Buselli-Wallarab Jazz Orchestra, Sean Dobbins and the Modern Jazz Messengers. He was the winner of the 2023 International Trumpet Guild Jazz Solo Competition, and his debut album Folklore (2023) received positive reviews. JazzWeekly said, “Butler has a sweet bopping tone to his horn, similar to that of vintage players like Kenny Dorham and Blue Mitchell.” He is a recent graduate of the Master’s program at IU, where he was an Associate Instructor.

Fasig is also a composer, arranger, and educator. He has written and recorded music with the Brent Wallarab Jazz Ensemble, John Raymond Ensemble, Greg Ward Large Ensemble, and the Plummer Jazz Quintet. He has also performed alongside world-class musicians, including Walter Smith III, Oliver Nelson Jr., Dayna Stephens, and Steve Houghton.

They are joined on this recording by other IU graduates NICK RECKTENWALD (trumpet), JEFF PARKER (trombone, bass trumpet), DAN VENTURA (piano), JACOB SMITH (bass), FRANCIS BASSETT-DILLEY (drums), and special guest WYCLIFFE GORDON on trombone on one track.

On ACROSS THE FIELD, Butler and Fasig did a yeoman’s task of turning college fight songs into hip jazz tunes with a modern edge. Before work on the album started, the Indiana Entertainment Foundation conceived and commissioned the idea for a live show. Working in conjunction with The Timeless Music Project, which presents live music performances around Indianapolis, Butler and Fasig came to the attention of the Project by Brent Wallarab, an Associate Professor of Jazz Studies at IU and a strong supporter of Butler and Fasig. The two jumped at the chance with each of them choosing and arranging six songs. 

Butler and Fasig chose songs they had some connection to and thought were amenable to modern jazz treatments. They kept the melodies somewhat front and center but provided fresh takes on each tune. The show premiered in October of 2023 at the SILO Club in Indianapolis and was such a hit, that the Entertainment Foundation asked them to record an album of the music. 

Around this time, Wycliffe Gordon had been in town performing with his band and had also enjoyed their music. When he agreed to record one tune, Butler and Fasig jointly arranged “Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight,” the fight song of Florida A&M University, Gordon’s alma mater.

Many of these songs, which were written at least 100 years ago, are based on marches that influenced early New Orleans street music. Butler explains, “A lot of these songs are not that far from the origins of early jazz. We all have a concept of modern marching bands, but once we dug into the music, we started to find a lot of commonalities. It’s more closely related than we thought.” 

The album opens with “Tiger Rag,” arranged by Butler. It was written and first recorded by the Original Dixieland Jazz Band in 1917. Butler took inspiration from Louisiana State University’s arrangement, using a traditional second-line feel and adding a twist of modern harmony and odd phrasing. The second half features classic NOLA-style backgrounds and a solo break during Butler’s solo. 

Other Butler arrangements include “Rocky Top.” The University of Tennessee chose the Osborne Brothers tune for the halftime show of a football game against Alabama. Butler’s twist on the tune features Dan Ventura on piano and Jeff Parker on bass trumpet. “Glory, Glory,” the classic fight song from the University of Georgia, features solos by Parker on trombone and Butler on trumpet. The University of Southern California’s “Fight On” uses multiple musical inspirations, including their “war march” opening that unwinds into a Lee Morgan “Sidewinder” groove and blues form, with solos from Fasig and Recktenwald leading into a big marching band-style finish. The groove of Georgia Tech’s “Ramblin’ Wreck” has a jazz march that lends itself to the classic pairing of muted-trumpet and flute. The whimsical tune features solos from Recktenwald on trumpet and Smith on bass. Butler transforms Notre Dame’s “Victory March” into a waltz featuring solos from Fasig on tenor saxophone and Ventura on piano. 

Fasig’s arrangement of the Naval Academy’s “Anchors Aweigh” turns this classic, traditional march into a lively straight-ahead jazz tune. At the band’s first show, the audience sang along to Indiana University’s “Indiana Our Indiana,” featuring Recktenwald on trumpet. “Across the Field,” a spirited march from Ohio State University, takes a reflective and winding harmonic journey while creatively reimagining the iconic “dogfight” section of this melody. Purdue University’s “Hail Purdue” features some soulful playing by Fasig, who also re-imagines University of Michigan’s “The Victors” as an up-tempo, modal jazz tune. Fasig arranged “On Wisconsin” as a swinging version of the original march, playing the melody in a minor key rather than major.

Butler and Fasig co-arranged “Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight,” from Florida A&M, featuring Wycliffe Gordon on trombone. The arrangement combines aspects of Theodore Metz’s original song, Louis Armstrong’s 1964 arrangement, and a Horace Silver-inspired form and backgrounds. 

Although the melodies on ACROSS THE FIELD will be familiar to many, Butler’s and Fasig’s clever, hip jazz arrangements played by musicians with top shelf improvisatory chops make this project truly unique.  

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ACROSS THE FIELD was released on October 4, 2024 on Patois Records and is available digitally on all platforms. Physical CDs are available at https://www.indianafound.org/shop/

WATCH: "Tiger Rag"

MORE VIDEOS HERE

Online: Instagram: @visionsjazzensemble, @sam.butler.trumpet, and @garrettfasig

Website: www.visionsjazzensemble.com

Liner Notes (by Neil Tesser)

Rah. Rah. Rah.

C’mon admit it — you see the phrase “college fight songs,” you get a flash of halftime shows and packed bleachers on autumn afternoons, far removed from the nuanced layers of a nightclub performance in the shank of the evening.

On this album, these seemingly polar opposites find a meeting point, right at midfield. In the hands of Sam Butler and Garrett Fasig, though, there’ve been some changes made.

 Butler’s arrangement of Notre Dame’s famed “Victory March” unfolds in three-quarter time — I guess the Irish are “waltzing to victory?” — with some New Orleans funk on the tail end. “Hail Purdue” is usually a fast-paced rabble-rouser, but Fasig lifts the homespun melody from its frantic tempo and improbably creates a lovely glee-club chorale. Then he gives the well-known “On Wisconsin” a minor-key makeover, turning it into a theme that would suit any James Bond caper. Butler’s arrangement of “Ramblin’ Wreck,” from Georgia Tech, uses flute to play up the melody’s Scottish roots, while on USC’s “Fight On” he finds the link between march beat and samba, then fades it into a light bossa, the better to tame the portentousness of that opening fanfare. 

 And so it goes throughout this delightfully inventive tour of collegiate athletics. The melodies haven’t changed — well, not that much — and the songs remain instantly recognizable. (Well, almost instantly.) But you haven’t heard them like this. And that’s the whole point: bringing a new perspective to music written a century ago, for a notably different purpose, and letting a team of savvy improvisers run wild.

As it turns out, the college fight songs of yore and the jazz sensibilities of today have more in common than it seems at first glance. Says Butler, “Interestingly, these songs, except for the more modern ones, take their emphasis from the early march form” — the idiom popularized in the late 19th and 20th centuries by John Philip Sousa. Not coincidentally, that’s about the time that most collegiate anthems were composed; Sousa himself wrote a half-dozen or more.

And as any jazz historian can tell you, marches and parade music supplied an important thread in the early jazz tapestry, lending their influence in terms of instrumentation and tempo — and even their content — to New Orleans street music. “A lot of these songs are not that far from the origins of early jazz,” Butler explains. “We all have a concept of modern marching bands, but once we dug into the music, we started to find a lot of commonalities. It’s more closely related than we thought.”

“Tiger Rag” offers the perfect intersect: a hit jazz tune that made its way to the gridiron. First recorded in 1917, it became synonymous with jazz in the music’s infancy, and it remains a clichéd signifier for the Jazz Age itself. But in 1926, the Louisiana State University Tigers adopted it as their fight song, and a century later, the band still plays it before each home football game (a scene repeated at practically every high school and college that has a tiger for its mascot).

In 1954, Dave Brubeck famously documented his tour of college campuses with an album titled Jazz Goes to College. Seventy years later, Butler and Fasig, along with the members of this estimable septet, have brought college to jazz, turning fight songs into love songs, frantic marches into cool grooves, and somehow getting “rah, rah, rah” to “swing, swing, swing.”  

Go team.

Band members

Sam Butler - Trumpet and Arrangements

Garrett Fasig - Tenor Saxophone and Arrangements

Nick Recktenwald - Trumpet

Jeff Parker - Trombone and Bass Trumpet

Wycliffe Gordon - Trombone (track 7)

Dan Ventura - Piano

Jacob Smith - Bass

Francis Bassett-Dilley - Drums

Producer

Brent Wallarab, Wayne Wallace and Greg Reynolds