Ward Swingle
Ward Swingle's arrangements give Bach's fugues and inventions a jazz vocal lift: close-harmony scat that keeps the counterpoint clear while the rhythm swings. Choirs still reach for those scores when they want that sound.
He formed the Swingle Singers to put the idea on record, first in France and later with an English group that drew classical and avant-garde works into the same vocal jazz frame. He published the arrangements, led workshops, and guest-conducted choirs after that blend of clarity and swing. His Bach fugue settings appear on Australian choral programmes as a light, exact change of colour.
Compositions by Ward Swingle appear on
The Choir of Ormond College Live
A live retrospective for the Choir of Ormond College’s twenty-first year, gathering concert recordings from 1985 to 2000 under Douglas Lawrence, from Britten’s Festival Te Deum and Fauré’s Requiem to Bach, Palestrina, Poulenc and lively encores.
The World is a Beautiful Place
The Australian Rosny Children’s Choir presents A Dozen of Dennis, Peter Davies’s settings of twelve poems from C. J. Dennis’s A Book for Kids, with the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra.