The Swingles

Biography —

The Swingles are one of the world’s most admired and loved vocal groups. With a natural flair as entertainers, their stylish, classy shows take them to venues and festival stages across the world. They have earned 5 Grammy® Awards and are recipients of multiple prestigious international accolades. With generations of fans from their live performances and appearances on film and TV soundtracks, The Swingles’ musical evolution and creative drive makes them as relevant today as when Ward Swingle started the group nearly six decades ago.

With their trademark vocal dexterity and innate musicality, The Swingles are reimagining jazz, classical, folk and pop from their ever-growing repertoire of arrangements alongside a rich vein of new original material. The group’s secret ingredient is the ability of the seven singers, soloists, songwriters and storytellers to combine as one seamlessly blended and timeless sound. The Swingles have always made creative use of close-mic amplification, and in the last decade, they have added unique live audio looping techniques to their stage performances – an
immersive layering up of vocals to mesmerise the audience.

American-born Ward Swingle first assembled a group of Parisian session singers (originally named Les Swingle Singers) to sing Bach’s music for the keyboard in 1962. The resulting album ‘Jazz Sebastian Bach’ was a huge hit, breaking new musical ground and launching The Swingles to fame. Since then, the group has released more than 50 albums encompassing a huge variety of music, fuelled by Ward Swingle’s pioneering spirit and omnivorous musical tastes. Carrying forward this legacy, today’s Swingles are Federica Basile (Italy), Joanna Goldsmith-Eteson (UK), Imogen Parry (UK), Oliver Griffiths (UK), Jamie Wright (UK), Jon Smith (US) and Tom Hartley (UK).

Revered experimental composer, Luciano Berio, was one of the first composers to explore the sound of The Swingles’ amplified voices in an orchestral setting with his ground-breaking Sinfonia. Notable performances include those with San Francisco Symphony (with Michael Tilson Thomas), ORF Vienna Radio (with Marin Alsop), London Philharmonic Orchestra (with Vladimir Jurowski), and the Orchestra of La Scala, Milan (with John Axelrod). Collaborations with artists from Labrinth to The King’s Singers, Peter Hollens and Jamie Cullum add to The Swingles creative output. The Swingles founded and curated the hugely successful London A Cappella Festival for 10 wonderful years from 2010- 2020.