Classical Changes Art Deco Trio

• Iain Farrington (b. 1977): The Bite of the Flumblebee (After Rimsky-Korsakov):
• 1 Farrington: The Bite of the Flumblebee (After Rimsky-Korsakov) 01:26
• Valerie Takes a Ride (After Wagner's WWV 86B):
• 2 Farrington: Valerie Takes a Ride (After Wagner's WWV 86B) 04:20
• Elise's Blues (After Beethoven's WoO 59):
• 3 Farrington: Elise's Blues (After Beethoven's WoO 59) 04:27
• Arrival Revival (After Handel):
• 4 Farrington: Arrival Revival (After Handel) 02:14
• One Night in Seville (After Bizet's WD 31):
• 5 Farrington: One Night in Seville (After Bizet's WD 31) 05:37
• Jiffy Dance (After Bizet's WD 31):
• 6 Farrington: Jiffy Dance (After Bizet's WD 31) 02:31
• Saturday in the Park with Elgar (After Elgar):
• 7 Farrington: Saturday in the Park with Elgar (After Elgar) 02:59
• Country Breaks (After Beethoven):
• 8 Farrington: Country Breaks (After Beethoven) 03:39
• Jim's Nobody (After Satie):
• 9 Farrington: Jim's Nobody (After Satie) 04:49
• Hungarian High-Five (After Brahms's WoO 1):
• 10 Farrington: Hungarian High-Five (After Brahms's WoO 1) 04:13
• 3am Lullaby (After Brahms's Op. 49 No. 4):
• 11 Farrington: 3am Lullaby (After Brahms's Op. 49 No. 4) 03:50
• There's a Storm Brewiing (After Vivaldi's RV 315):
• 12 Farrington: There's a Storm Brewiing (After Vivaldi's RV 315) 02:28
• A Sea Shanty Shake-Up:
• 13 Farrington: A Sea Shanty Shake-Up: I. What Shall We Do with the Drunken Sailor 02:23
• 14 Farrington: A Sea Shanty Shake-Up: II. Lowlands 02:29
• 15 Farrington: A Sea Shanty Shake-Up: III. Sailor's Hornpipe 02:14
• Lay My Burden Down:
• 16 Farrington: Lay My Burden Down: I. When I Lay My Burden Down 02:53
• 17 Farrington: Lay My Burden Down: II. Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child 04:40
• 18 Farrington: Lay My Burden Down: III. Amazing Grace 06:49
• 19 Farrington: Lay My Burden Down: IV. Steal Away 04:40
• 20 Farrington: Lay My Burden Down: V. Every Time I Feel the Spirit 04:09
• Total Runtime 01:12:50

Info for Classical Changes

SOMM Recordings is pleased to announce Classical Changes, a second disc by the Art Deco Trio, which treats favourite classical pieces to delightful and often dazzling jazz-accented re-workings in variegated arrangements by Iain Farrington.

Also featuring five African-American Spirituals and three sea shanties, Classical Change takes the early-20th-century fashion for “Jazzing the Classics” at face value with a collection of 20 first recordings of scintillating new arrangements, translating the works’ “original sober environment into one that was more intoxicated”, as Farrington tellingly comments in his booklet notes.

Familiar pieces by Beethoven, Brahms and Rimsky-Korsakov are respectively refashioned in the, by turns, evocative, exuberant and ecstatic ‘Elise’s Blues’, ‘Hungarian High-Five’ and ‘The Bite of the Flumblebee’.

Similar treatment is afforded Bizet (the excitable ‘Jiffy Dance’ and sultry ‘One Night in Seville’), the ceremonial pomp of Handel (‘Arrival Revival’), grandeur of Elgar (‘Saturday in the Park with Elgar’), and grandiosity of Wagner (‘Valerie Takes a Ride’) alongside vivacious re-imaginings of Satie and Vivaldi.

The trio of sea shanties in A Sea Shanty Shake-Up and the five-part Lay My Burden Down, drawn from African-American Spirituals, prove pleasingly amenable to Farrington’s jazz-laced re-fashioning of their various messages and moods.

Of the Art Deco Trio’s Gershwinicity, BBC Music Magazine declared “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”. Fanfare approvingly commented: “Not only are the arrangements superb, but so is the Art Deco Trio’s performance of them…. I think it’s a safe bet that any Gershwin aficionado will be as captivated with this disc as I was”.

Peter Sparks, clarinet
Kyle Horch, saxophone
Iain Farrington, piano

The Art Deco Trio
performs classical and popular music with a jazz influence. They combine the materials and textures of the classical repertoire with the rhythms and harmonies of jazz. Like the Art Deco style, their music mixes elegance and clean lines with exuberance and bold colours. The trio is made up of three friends and colleagues, who have performed together in numerous ensembles at many of the leading UK venues. They have recorded an album of new Gershwin arrangements for SOMM Recordings, called Gershwinicity. Selections of the album have featured on BBC Radio Three, La Scala Radio, RTE Lyric FM, France Musique. Their second album, called Classical Changes, is released in February 2023, and features jazz-inspired arrangements of Classical favourites.

Peter Sparks
read music at Cambridge University, studying clarinet with the late Dame Thea King. He subsequently studied at the Royal Academy of Music, under Angela Malsbury and Nick Rodwell. Peter is Co-Principal Clarinet at English National Opera, and has performed as guest Principal Clarinet with most of the leading symphony, chamber and opera orchestras in the UK with concerts, broadcasts and recordings at home and abroad. A busy chamber musician, Peter performs with a number of different ensembles, including London Winds, with whom he frequently broadcasts on BBC Radio 3 and performs in UK venues such as the Wigmore Hall, Queen Elizabeth Hall, BBC Proms as well as at international festivals.

​Peter also records as a session musician for a variety of TV shows and films, including The Crown. Peter is an accomplished soloist and has performed numerous concertos such as those by Mozart, Debussy, Adams, Finzi, Copland, Weber and both Konzertstuck by Mendelssohn with Michael Collins. He has premiered many new works and has an affinity for contemporary music. Some commissions include works by Nicola LeFanu and two pieces by Peter Wiegold (including a bass clarinet concerto, ‘New York’), which were premiered in the Park Lane Group series. Peter also teaches clarinet at the Royal College of Music, London.

Kyle Horch
studied in Chicago at Northwestern University (B.Mus, M.Mus), where he learned with Frederick Hemke, and postgraduate study at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London, with Stephen Trier. Since making his London debut on the Park Lane Group series, he has performed as soloist at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, Purcell Room, British and World Saxophone Congresses, and many other venues in Britain and abroad. Kyle maintains an active career as a freelance musician across a wide range of chamber, orchestral, contemporary, and light music. Orchestral work has included concerts, tours, broadcasts, and CD recordings with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, Birmingham Contemporary Music Group, Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, Birmingham Royal Ballet, Rambert Dance Company, London Symphony Orchestra, London Philharmonic Orchestra, Philharmonia Orchestra, Mariinsky Theatre Orchestra, Royal Opera House (Covent Garden), Music Theatre Wales, Garsington Opera, BBC National Orchestra of Wales, and many others.

Kyle is lead saxophonist with Michael Law's Piccadilly Dance Orchestra, playing music from the American Songbook, mixed with early jazz arrangements, as well as songs by British contemporaries. Kyle has made several critically acclaimed recordings as a featured solo artist, exploring chamber repertoire for saxophone and other instruments, as well as music by contemporary composers, including Ian Stewart, Timothy Salter, John Carmichael, and Roderick Elms. He is a member of the chamber ensemble Counterpoise which has commissioned and premiered numerous works, performing in venues and festivals across the UK. Kyle is a saxophone professor at the Royal College of Music in London, Visiting Saxophone Consultant at Birmingham Conservatoire, and saxophone teacher at Royal Holloway, University of London. In recognition of his many achievements as a performer and teacher, Kyle was appointed to the honorary position of Vice-President of the Clarinet and Saxophone Society of Great Britain in 2016.

Iain Farrington
has a busy and diverse career as a pianist, organist, composer and arranger. He studied at the Royal Academy of Music, London and at Cambridge University. He has made numerous recordings, and has broadcast on BBC Television, Classic FM and BBC Radio 3. As a solo pianist, accompanist, chamber musician and organist, Iain has performed at all the major UK venues and abroad in the USA, Japan, Mexico, South Africa, Malaysia, Hong Kong and all across Europe. He has accompanied a number of the country's leading musicians, including Willard White, Bryn Terfel and Lesley Garrett. Iain played the piano at the opening ceremony of the London 2012 Olympics with Rowan Atkinson, the London Symphony Orchestra and Sir Simon Rattle, broadcast to a global audience of around a billion viewers. He has performed on numerous occasions at the BBC Proms, including acclaimed solo performances in 2007 on the Royal Albert Hall organ. ​

Iain has composed orchestral, choral and instrumental pieces and has arranged hundreds of works in many styles, including opera, orchestral, choral, African songs, cabaret, klezmer, jazz and pop. He has composed several orchestral works for the BBC Proms, including Beethoveniana in 2020, Gershwinicity in 2018, A Shipshape Shindig in 2017, and two pieces for the Wallace and Gromit Prom in 2012. With the poet, DJ and actor Craig Charles he has written three large-scale orchestral works based on traditional fairytales, titled Scary Fairy. His chamber orchestrations of the symphonic repertoire are regularly performed around the world and his organ arrangement of Elgar's Pomp and Circumstance March No. 5 was performed at the Royal Wedding in 2011. In 2018, Iain performed a Mahler Piano Series in London, which featured his own solo piano arrangements of Mahler's symphonies, alongside songs and piano music from the period.

This album contains no booklet.