Art Deco Trio - Gershwinicity
Peter Sparks - clarinet Kyle Horch - saxophone Iain Farrington - piano/arranger This recording features 15 new instrumental arrangements of songs by George Gershwin, blending classical and jazz influences. The music mixes classical elegance and clean lines with the exuberance and bold colours of jazz. Featuring many of Gershwin's well known melodies, the title track was originally performed at the BBC Proms in 2018. SOMM Recordings - SOMM CD 0631 Available on Spotify here |
Gershwinicity - Songs by George Gershwin, arranged by Iain Farrington
CONTENTS:
1. I got rhythm: 2'02
2. They all laughed: 3'57
3. The man I love: 3'31
4. Nice work if you can get it: 3'46
5. Summertime: 7'56
6. They can't take that away from me: 4'51
7. Fidgety feet: 3'20
8. Our love is here to stay: 5'06
9. I'll build a stairway to paradise: 4'07
10. Do it again: 3'51
11. It ain't necessarily so: 2'42
12. Someone to watch over me: 4'52
13. I've got a crush on you: 3'45
14. But not for me: 2'49
15. Gershwinicity (Let's call the whole thing off - A foggy day in London town - Fascinating rhythm - Embraceable you - Lady be good): 14'18
Total: 71'00
Born in 1898, George Gershwin was brought up amidst the noise, energy and opportunity that was the cultural melting pot of early 20th-century New York. As the son of two Russian Jewish immigrants, Gershwin was part of a new generation of American musicians with a similar background, such as Irving Berlin, Aaron Copland and Leonard Bernstein. This mixture of old European traditions and fast-paced young America would result in a dazzling musical output that crossed boundaries of ‘popular’ and ‘serious’.
In that exciting era, New York was the heart of American popular song, where the music publishers plugged the songs on Tin Pan Alley, and the Broadway theatres entertained the public with their catchy tunes. George Gershwin worked mainly as a songwriter throughout his life, often with his brother Ira writing the lyrics. George’s ambitions and talent also drew him into the concert hall and the world of orchestral music, starting with the wildly successful Rhapsody in Blue in 1924. As one of the first and most successful ‘cross-over’ composers, Gershwin’s music was – and still is – regularly performed across the musical spectrum, by classical orchestras, jazz ensembles, pop and opera singers.
While classical musicians generally perform from the composer’s notated music, pop and jazz musicians improvise, arrange and adapt the raw material of the songs to make them their own. This freedom of expression often leads to a much wider degree of interpretation between performers, as a song becomes a fast-paced frenzy with one performer, or a slow, melancholic confession in another. While the basic melody and harmony of the song remains, an entirely new ‘composition’ is created by the performer.
These new arrangements explore the coming together of jazz and classical without deliberately recreating the original sound-world, and avoiding any sentimental sweetness. Although clearly drawing on the spirit of improvisation, they allow a harmonic and structural complexity that comes with notated music. Numerous re-harmonisations and modulations abound, along with much newly composed material. All three instruments have a shared heritage in classical and jazz, and a flexibility to embrace both genres. They possess the dynamic extremes from sublime tenderness to thrilling power and brilliance. As a duo, the clarinet and saxophone are capable of blending with each other perfectly, while also displaying their own individual characteristics.
The ensemble purposefully avoids the use of those quintessential jazz ensemble timbres: drum kit and double bass. Instead, the piano carries the rhythmic drive, giving a focus on the rich harmony, as well as the counterpoint between the instruments. The repertoire includes new versions of a wide range of music, including the Great American Songbook, familiar classical music as well as modern popular song. This recording of Gershwin songs is music of love, loss, loneliness and laughter.
Reviews
BBC Music Magazine
Gershwin songs brought to vivid life by piano, clarinet and sax. What's not to love? It's a winning combination and the arrangements are top notch too. This is a recording that is guaranteed to get you moving.
Clarinet and Saxophone Magazine
The Art Deco Trio comprises Peter Sparks (clarinet), Kyle Horch (saxophone), and Iain Farrington (piano/arranger). All three musicians are well-known, top-class performers in their own right. Right from the first piano glissando, the album sparkles with fun, entertainment and colour. If you're looking for some escapism from the trials and tribulations of the pandemic, then this is a disc for you, as Farrington's brilliant arrangements of Gershwin classics transport you back to the halcyon days of the 1930s. The album is a veritable feast of the Gershwin back catalogue, featuring well-known tunes.
But Gershwinicity is more than just a trip down memory lane; it includes some very different re-workings of these songs, such as a jazz-funk version of Fascinating Rhythm for alto saxophone recalling the grooves of the 1970s, and a gorgeous, melancholic arrangement of Summertime that left me feeling lonely and cold with its ever-shifting unsettled harmonies.
The trio has deliberately avoided using a rhythm section on this album, instead utilising the piano to carry the rhythmic drive, giving a focus to the rich harmony and counterpoint between the instruments. There's a beautifully live quality to the recording; you can hear the breath, the reed noise and overall it sounds very real and honest. Horch plays soprano and alto saxophones, and I love how his soft, mellow sax sound (used sparingly in Farrington's arrangements) provides a welcome contrast to the brighter colours of clarinet and soprano sax. The textures evolve during the album and several tracks become even more intimate, scored for single-reed instrument and piano, and two songs allow us to hear solo piano.
The interplay between the parts is wonderful; a chance to hear three masters of their instruments kicking back and enjoying themselves. Sit down, make yourself a cocktail and you'll be at the American Bar at The Savoy in no time at all.
Fanfare Magazine
When I first opened the parcel from Fanfare Central that contained this CD entitled Gershwinicity, I honestly wasn’t very excited. Gershwin’s music has been arranged by just about every arranger under the sun, and most of the arrangements leave me wishing I was hearing the original works instead. Then I put this CD into my player, and from the very first notes was won over. Pianist Iain Farrington sure knows what he’s doing in creating catchy versions for clarinet, soprano and alto saxophones, and piano. He has a great ear for harmony, freely adjusting Gershwin’s to create memorable new settings of these chestnuts.
The tunes employ different combinations of the four instruments and three players. Of the 15 song settings, six of them utilize all three players (and one alternating between the two members of the sax family), another seven combine one wind with the piano, the final two being for piano solo. This variation helps keep the textures fresh. Not only are the arrangements superb, but so is the Art Deco Trio’s performance of them. Its members have, collectively and individually, Gershwin’s style really nailed down. More than that, they evidence an ability to adjust their style of playing to the character of the song at hand such that The man I love sounds quite different from, say, Nice work if you can get it. In addition to these two, some of my other favorite Gershwin tunes are treated, including I got rhythm, Summertime, Love is here to stay, and Someone to watch over me, along with a few tunes with which I’m not very familiar, e.g. They all laughed, and But not for me. There are actually more than 15 tunes treated, given that the CD’s final track is a compilation called Gershwinicity that combines five different tunes into a 14-minute suite. Additionally, some of the tunes are set in the midst of original music, an example being Summertime, which has an extended introduction of non-Gershwin (albeit very effective) music. This treatment serves to more than double the length of the song as heard in Porgy and Bess and the tune in this arrangement is hinted at as much as it’s heard in recognizable form.
I think it’s a safe bet that any Gershwin aficionado will be as captivated with this disc as I was, and consequently give a hearty two thumbs’ up to anyone who identifies as such.
Four stars: A delightful reworking for clarinet, saxophones and piano of some of Gershwin’s most popular songs.
The Robert Farnon Society
This is an entertaining release of 19 songs by the foremost ‘cross-over’ composer, the great George Gershwin, arranged for clarinet, saxophone and piano, which (to quote the well-informed booklet notes) “combine jazz influences with the structures and textures of classical music”, and well worth investigating by light music lovers. The man behind the disc is pianist and arranger Iain Farrington, who played the piano at the opening ceremony of the London 2012 Olympics with Rowan Atkinson, the LSO and Sir Simon Rattle – watched by a global audience of around a billion. He also made the organ arrangement of Elgar’s Pomp and Circumstance March No.5 performed at the Royal Wedding in 2011. The clarinettist is Peter Sparks, co-principal clarinet at English National Opera, also a recording session musician (e.g., ‘The Crown’). The third member of the Trio is Kyle Horch, the lead saxophonist (alto and soprano) in the evocative Michael Law’s Piccadilly Dance Orchestra among many other musical activities including CD recordings.
The title track is a fantasy based on five Gershwin songs – Let’s call the whole thing off, A foggy day in London town, Fascinating rhythm, Embraceable you, Lady be good – first heard in 2018 at the BBC Proms. Other tracks include I got rhythm, They all laughed, Nice work if you can get it, They can’t take that away from me, Fidgety feet, I’ll build a stairway to Paradise, Do it again (does anyone remember Marilyn Monroe’s erotic rendering?), But not for me and a couple of numbers from ‘Porgy and Bess’. All are first recordings and our friends at Somm are to be congratulated on making them available. They were recorded at The Menuhin Hall, Stoke d’Abernon, Surrey, on September 4-5, 2020, produced by Siva Oke and engineered by Paul Arden-Taylor.
I enjoyed this album from start to finish, reminding me somewhat of similar discs by André Previn and friends back in the day. So unreservedly recommended, and I reckon it would meet with Gershwin’s own approval. Peter Burt
That George Gershwin was arguably one of the greatest Popular Music composers of the 20s and 30s is completely beyond dispute. Moreover, he was almost certainly the first to become a 'crossover composer', effortlessly straddling the divide between the popular and light-classical genres, with more than just a bit of jazz 'thrown-in' for good measure. In this respect he paved the way for André Previn, Leonard Bernstein and others – including, I would suggest, Robert Farnon. Many of Gershwin's works have been the subject of numerous arrangements, both vocal and instrumental, over the years. However, this is the first time that they have been recorded employing this particular – not to say unusual – line-up, viz. piano, clarinet and soprano/alto saxophones.
Of the fifteen tracks, six are performed by all three instrumentalists. I was particularly struck by the way in which the clarinet and saxophone blended so beautifully together, e.g. in I Got Rhythm and They All Laughed. A couple of titles are performed solo by Iain Farrington, the Trio's pianist, arranger and – I suspect – 'prime mover' of the enterprise. The remaining seven are performed by either clarinet or saxophone – of either variety – accompanied by the piano. I would like to single-out for comment Farrington's 'take' on Summertime – a song which is a special favourite of mine. This is a really stunning arrangement and for me is one of the highlights of the whole programme. I totally concur with Peter Burt's comments above, and I’m delighted to give this new CD my unequivocal recommendation. Tony Clayden
CONTENTS:
1. I got rhythm: 2'02
2. They all laughed: 3'57
3. The man I love: 3'31
4. Nice work if you can get it: 3'46
5. Summertime: 7'56
6. They can't take that away from me: 4'51
7. Fidgety feet: 3'20
8. Our love is here to stay: 5'06
9. I'll build a stairway to paradise: 4'07
10. Do it again: 3'51
11. It ain't necessarily so: 2'42
12. Someone to watch over me: 4'52
13. I've got a crush on you: 3'45
14. But not for me: 2'49
15. Gershwinicity (Let's call the whole thing off - A foggy day in London town - Fascinating rhythm - Embraceable you - Lady be good): 14'18
Total: 71'00
Born in 1898, George Gershwin was brought up amidst the noise, energy and opportunity that was the cultural melting pot of early 20th-century New York. As the son of two Russian Jewish immigrants, Gershwin was part of a new generation of American musicians with a similar background, such as Irving Berlin, Aaron Copland and Leonard Bernstein. This mixture of old European traditions and fast-paced young America would result in a dazzling musical output that crossed boundaries of ‘popular’ and ‘serious’.
In that exciting era, New York was the heart of American popular song, where the music publishers plugged the songs on Tin Pan Alley, and the Broadway theatres entertained the public with their catchy tunes. George Gershwin worked mainly as a songwriter throughout his life, often with his brother Ira writing the lyrics. George’s ambitions and talent also drew him into the concert hall and the world of orchestral music, starting with the wildly successful Rhapsody in Blue in 1924. As one of the first and most successful ‘cross-over’ composers, Gershwin’s music was – and still is – regularly performed across the musical spectrum, by classical orchestras, jazz ensembles, pop and opera singers.
While classical musicians generally perform from the composer’s notated music, pop and jazz musicians improvise, arrange and adapt the raw material of the songs to make them their own. This freedom of expression often leads to a much wider degree of interpretation between performers, as a song becomes a fast-paced frenzy with one performer, or a slow, melancholic confession in another. While the basic melody and harmony of the song remains, an entirely new ‘composition’ is created by the performer.
These new arrangements explore the coming together of jazz and classical without deliberately recreating the original sound-world, and avoiding any sentimental sweetness. Although clearly drawing on the spirit of improvisation, they allow a harmonic and structural complexity that comes with notated music. Numerous re-harmonisations and modulations abound, along with much newly composed material. All three instruments have a shared heritage in classical and jazz, and a flexibility to embrace both genres. They possess the dynamic extremes from sublime tenderness to thrilling power and brilliance. As a duo, the clarinet and saxophone are capable of blending with each other perfectly, while also displaying their own individual characteristics.
The ensemble purposefully avoids the use of those quintessential jazz ensemble timbres: drum kit and double bass. Instead, the piano carries the rhythmic drive, giving a focus on the rich harmony, as well as the counterpoint between the instruments. The repertoire includes new versions of a wide range of music, including the Great American Songbook, familiar classical music as well as modern popular song. This recording of Gershwin songs is music of love, loss, loneliness and laughter.
Reviews
BBC Music Magazine
Gershwin songs brought to vivid life by piano, clarinet and sax. What's not to love? It's a winning combination and the arrangements are top notch too. This is a recording that is guaranteed to get you moving.
Clarinet and Saxophone Magazine
The Art Deco Trio comprises Peter Sparks (clarinet), Kyle Horch (saxophone), and Iain Farrington (piano/arranger). All three musicians are well-known, top-class performers in their own right. Right from the first piano glissando, the album sparkles with fun, entertainment and colour. If you're looking for some escapism from the trials and tribulations of the pandemic, then this is a disc for you, as Farrington's brilliant arrangements of Gershwin classics transport you back to the halcyon days of the 1930s. The album is a veritable feast of the Gershwin back catalogue, featuring well-known tunes.
But Gershwinicity is more than just a trip down memory lane; it includes some very different re-workings of these songs, such as a jazz-funk version of Fascinating Rhythm for alto saxophone recalling the grooves of the 1970s, and a gorgeous, melancholic arrangement of Summertime that left me feeling lonely and cold with its ever-shifting unsettled harmonies.
The trio has deliberately avoided using a rhythm section on this album, instead utilising the piano to carry the rhythmic drive, giving a focus to the rich harmony and counterpoint between the instruments. There's a beautifully live quality to the recording; you can hear the breath, the reed noise and overall it sounds very real and honest. Horch plays soprano and alto saxophones, and I love how his soft, mellow sax sound (used sparingly in Farrington's arrangements) provides a welcome contrast to the brighter colours of clarinet and soprano sax. The textures evolve during the album and several tracks become even more intimate, scored for single-reed instrument and piano, and two songs allow us to hear solo piano.
The interplay between the parts is wonderful; a chance to hear three masters of their instruments kicking back and enjoying themselves. Sit down, make yourself a cocktail and you'll be at the American Bar at The Savoy in no time at all.
Fanfare Magazine
When I first opened the parcel from Fanfare Central that contained this CD entitled Gershwinicity, I honestly wasn’t very excited. Gershwin’s music has been arranged by just about every arranger under the sun, and most of the arrangements leave me wishing I was hearing the original works instead. Then I put this CD into my player, and from the very first notes was won over. Pianist Iain Farrington sure knows what he’s doing in creating catchy versions for clarinet, soprano and alto saxophones, and piano. He has a great ear for harmony, freely adjusting Gershwin’s to create memorable new settings of these chestnuts.
The tunes employ different combinations of the four instruments and three players. Of the 15 song settings, six of them utilize all three players (and one alternating between the two members of the sax family), another seven combine one wind with the piano, the final two being for piano solo. This variation helps keep the textures fresh. Not only are the arrangements superb, but so is the Art Deco Trio’s performance of them. Its members have, collectively and individually, Gershwin’s style really nailed down. More than that, they evidence an ability to adjust their style of playing to the character of the song at hand such that The man I love sounds quite different from, say, Nice work if you can get it. In addition to these two, some of my other favorite Gershwin tunes are treated, including I got rhythm, Summertime, Love is here to stay, and Someone to watch over me, along with a few tunes with which I’m not very familiar, e.g. They all laughed, and But not for me. There are actually more than 15 tunes treated, given that the CD’s final track is a compilation called Gershwinicity that combines five different tunes into a 14-minute suite. Additionally, some of the tunes are set in the midst of original music, an example being Summertime, which has an extended introduction of non-Gershwin (albeit very effective) music. This treatment serves to more than double the length of the song as heard in Porgy and Bess and the tune in this arrangement is hinted at as much as it’s heard in recognizable form.
I think it’s a safe bet that any Gershwin aficionado will be as captivated with this disc as I was, and consequently give a hearty two thumbs’ up to anyone who identifies as such.
Four stars: A delightful reworking for clarinet, saxophones and piano of some of Gershwin’s most popular songs.
The Robert Farnon Society
This is an entertaining release of 19 songs by the foremost ‘cross-over’ composer, the great George Gershwin, arranged for clarinet, saxophone and piano, which (to quote the well-informed booklet notes) “combine jazz influences with the structures and textures of classical music”, and well worth investigating by light music lovers. The man behind the disc is pianist and arranger Iain Farrington, who played the piano at the opening ceremony of the London 2012 Olympics with Rowan Atkinson, the LSO and Sir Simon Rattle – watched by a global audience of around a billion. He also made the organ arrangement of Elgar’s Pomp and Circumstance March No.5 performed at the Royal Wedding in 2011. The clarinettist is Peter Sparks, co-principal clarinet at English National Opera, also a recording session musician (e.g., ‘The Crown’). The third member of the Trio is Kyle Horch, the lead saxophonist (alto and soprano) in the evocative Michael Law’s Piccadilly Dance Orchestra among many other musical activities including CD recordings.
The title track is a fantasy based on five Gershwin songs – Let’s call the whole thing off, A foggy day in London town, Fascinating rhythm, Embraceable you, Lady be good – first heard in 2018 at the BBC Proms. Other tracks include I got rhythm, They all laughed, Nice work if you can get it, They can’t take that away from me, Fidgety feet, I’ll build a stairway to Paradise, Do it again (does anyone remember Marilyn Monroe’s erotic rendering?), But not for me and a couple of numbers from ‘Porgy and Bess’. All are first recordings and our friends at Somm are to be congratulated on making them available. They were recorded at The Menuhin Hall, Stoke d’Abernon, Surrey, on September 4-5, 2020, produced by Siva Oke and engineered by Paul Arden-Taylor.
I enjoyed this album from start to finish, reminding me somewhat of similar discs by André Previn and friends back in the day. So unreservedly recommended, and I reckon it would meet with Gershwin’s own approval. Peter Burt
That George Gershwin was arguably one of the greatest Popular Music composers of the 20s and 30s is completely beyond dispute. Moreover, he was almost certainly the first to become a 'crossover composer', effortlessly straddling the divide between the popular and light-classical genres, with more than just a bit of jazz 'thrown-in' for good measure. In this respect he paved the way for André Previn, Leonard Bernstein and others – including, I would suggest, Robert Farnon. Many of Gershwin's works have been the subject of numerous arrangements, both vocal and instrumental, over the years. However, this is the first time that they have been recorded employing this particular – not to say unusual – line-up, viz. piano, clarinet and soprano/alto saxophones.
Of the fifteen tracks, six are performed by all three instrumentalists. I was particularly struck by the way in which the clarinet and saxophone blended so beautifully together, e.g. in I Got Rhythm and They All Laughed. A couple of titles are performed solo by Iain Farrington, the Trio's pianist, arranger and – I suspect – 'prime mover' of the enterprise. The remaining seven are performed by either clarinet or saxophone – of either variety – accompanied by the piano. I would like to single-out for comment Farrington's 'take' on Summertime – a song which is a special favourite of mine. This is a really stunning arrangement and for me is one of the highlights of the whole programme. I totally concur with Peter Burt's comments above, and I’m delighted to give this new CD my unequivocal recommendation. Tony Clayden