Art Deco Trio - 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. Comprising three remarkable instrumentalists � Peter Sparks clarinet, Kyle Horch saxophone, Iain Farrington piano � the Art Deco Trio is a virtuosic powerhouse in performance and made its acclaimed label debut with Gershwinicity (SOMMCD0631) in 2021. 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.