Hoosiers in the house! With a dynamic but totally no-brainer concept that will have jazz fans wondering why nobody ever (literally) tackled it before, IU grads and highly accomplished composers, arrangers and educators Sam Butler (trumpet) and Garrett Fasig (tenor sax) lead an ensemble of fellow Hoosiers to create the endlessly intriguing Across the Field, a sublime and endlessly engaging collection of re-imagined college fight songs from top American universities.
As we traverse the country from Butler’s peppy, fast grooving twist on Louisiana State’s arrangement of the Original Dixieland Band’s 1917 piece “Tiger Rag” to a slightly lower key, easy swing through “On Wisconsin,” we realize just how adaptable these classic and mostly familiar pieces are to stirring, brass and percussion driven arrangements.
With approximately half the tunes arranged by Butler and half by Fasig, the tunes are in loving and passionate, richly improvisational hands, jazzily reflecting on an important and traditional musical aspect of the American spirit. Interestingly, as Butler points out, some of these century old songs are based on marches that influenced early New Orleans Music, which is surely why they began with “Tiger Rag.”
No less cool, hip and vibrant are the spirited, strutting version of “Anchors Aweigh” (Naval Academy), the triumphant gospel energy of “Glory, Glory” (University of Georgia), “Fight On” (USC) and the marching jazz of Georgia Tech’s “Ramblin’ Wreck.” For the band, there’s no doubt that the emotional core of the set is the graceful and patriotic, then explosive and trumpet driven romp through “Indiana, Our Indiana.”
The project began as a live performance in October 2023 at the Silo Club in Indy, presented by the Indiana Entertainment Foundation in conjunction with The Timeless Music Project.