Seattle has provided culture Grunge music and jazz vocalist Courtney Cutchins. Cutchins provides listeners Grunge to Grace, a recording that assimilates the music into jazz while staying true to its spirit and content. Grunge and jazz are not so far apart. Jazz musicians have covered Soundgarden’s “Black Hole Sun” from that band’s album Superunknown (A&M Records, 1994), several times, including Norah Jones, Haley Reinhart, Michal Shapira, Brad Mehldau, and Rachel Z. Gratefully, Cuctchins does not cover the song on Grunge to Grace. Instead, she covers Soundgarden’s “Boot Camp,” “The Day I Tried To Live,” and Kurt Cobain’s and Nirvana’s “All Apologies.” She couples these songs with six original compositions in which Cutchins seizes Grunge’s gestalt, filtering it through an acoustic jazz combo.
The 1990s music of her youth moves Cutchins, compelling her to weave its experience into her Cornish College of the Arts in Seattle and Manhattan School of Music education to create something fresh and vibrant. The results are impressive. Opening with “Boot Camp,” Cutchins’ arrangement thunders with David Cook’s sustained piano low notes supporting Nir Felder’s percolating guitar figures. Cutchins’ voice is every bit as organic and commanding as reputation has it. The original “Passenger” moves with a nearly staccato strut. Soundgarden’s “The Day I Tried to Live” stands out with Felder’s superb acoustic playing and the vocalist’s expressed urgency. Cutchins’ “Prison In Your Mind” bears the Grunge imagery of internal isolation and disquiet. She sings of these things from imagination and experience, both of which benefit this fine recording.