Mastodawn

Place Vendôme (released as Encounter in the U.S.) is an album released by the Swingle Singers performing with the Modern Jazz Quartet.

Place Vendôme Review by Uncle Dave Lewis

For a short time in the mid-'60s, the Modern Jazz Quartet were working primarily in Europe and recording for the French division of Philips, with the results coming out in the United States on the MJQ's regular label, Atlantic. There was only one exception to this rule: Place Vendôme, which comprised the collaboration of the MJQ with the Swingle Singers, and which appeared in the U.S. on Philips' American subsidiary through Mercury Records. For Philips, the collaboration must have seemed like an inevitability; Ward Swingle had sung with the Double Six of Paris, which had backed up Dizzy Gillespie who, of course, had led the big band out of which the MJQ was formed in 1952...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5iLT42A1nJU&list=PLfJndz0utgONYZxUHRIx-WMpZdn7jizQH&index=1

#ModernJazzQuartet #SwingleSingers #VocalJazz #Jazz #Music

Andi Chorley Aug 28, 2025

Sinfonia by Luciano Berio, The Swingle Singers and New York Philharmonic, released on Columbia Masterworks in 1969.

Premiered in 1968 and finally completed in 1969, Luciano Berio’s Sinfonia for Eight Voices and Orchestra is a kaleidoscope of ideas that is both intellectually playful and viscerally powerful. The vocal parts were originally written for The Swingle Singers (8 amplified voices) and full orchestra, and over five decades the group has built up an unrivalled understanding of the piece and its technical demands.

Commissioned by the New York Philharmonic for its 125th anniversary, Sinfonia is written in five movements. In the central third movement, Berio uses Mahler’s 2nd Symphony as the framework for a journey through 400 years of Western music...

https://www.theswingles.co.uk/berio

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MwQnKvEc73g&list=RDMwQnKvEc73g&start_radio=1

#lucianoberio #swinglesingers #newyorkphilharmonic