Customer Reviews

Live in Japan

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I bought "Live in Japan" CD originally for myself as I love a capella Jazz and Swingle Singers in particular. Soon this program became my favorite one, and I already bought the same CD as a Christmas gift for a very special family member. I highly recommend this CD to all a capella Jazz lovers.

Recorded live in Japan in December 2000, and the Swingle Singer's customary (or rather, become customary in recent years) mixture of classical music (Bach, Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture, and Weill - that is, if you consider Weill to be a classical music composer; but September song from Knickerbocker Holiday is Broadway music), pop ballads (two Beatles songs - the Swingle had just recorded a complete Beatles album, first published on their own label, Swing CD 15, and reissued two years later by Primarily A Cappella, Ticket to Ride: A Beatles Tribute, which included these two songs, "Ticket to Ride" and "Fool on the Hill" -, Procol Harum's chart-making 1967 "A Wither Shade of Pale", "Bohemian Rhapsody" which I thought was going to be by Dvorak but no, it turns out to be Queen/Freddie Mercury), crooning ballads (the Swingles' product info is notoriously un-informative and attributes "Someone's Rocking my Dreamboat" only to "René/Scott/René", but thanks to the instant knowledge provided by the Internet I now know that it is a famous popular song written by Leon René and Emerson Scott and made famous by the Ink Spots in the 1940s), Christmas songs and carols (this was recorded end of December, remember?), traditional (Amazing Grace), and the movies (Mission Impossible as an encore - two years before the Swingles had already devoted a complete CD to film music, "Screen Tested", not listed on this website but available on the UK sister company, ASIN B00005GJYM).

There is also a mixture of reprises of old or new Swingle hits (the Bach numbers, Irving Berlin's "White Christmas", already on the Swingles' 1996 Irving Berlin album, Sing Irving Berlin or A Celebration Of the Voice or Top Hat White Tie And Tails, Tchaikovsky's 1812, Someone's Rocking My Dreamboat and the Beatle's Fool on a Hill, all three originally on the album 1812 from 1988/9, The Swingle Singers: 1812, reissued by Virgin on 1812, "Ticket to Ride", in the arrangement by Alexander L'Estrange, which gave its title to the Swingles' Beatles album from the year before, Mission Impossible) and new arrangements (the three Weill numbers, to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the composer's birth, Gounod's Ave Maria, the Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody", some of the Christmas songs and carols, Amazing Grace). As a short bonus track, you get the announcement by one of the Swingle Singers, in genuine Japanese, of Tchaikovsky's 1812 overture. Hey, too bad the all 8 of them didn't announce it a cappella.

The program displays the Swingle's customary elegance, its downside being a certain lack of bite and raw energy - no Lotte Lenya, no Berlin sauciness in the three Weill numbers, for instance. I personally find the pop ballad of Procol Harum embarrassing in its cheap sentimentality - but to treat everybody fairly, so is Gounod's Ave Maria, despite its use of Bach's first prelude from The Well-Tempered Clavier as accompaniment. But I enjoyed "Little Drummer Boy" and "Away in a Manger", and the Mission Impossible theme is even better than in the film music album, because now one of the Swingle Singers is creating a percussive noise by tapping his cheeks with his hands. But, clearly, it is the three Bach pieces that, as ever, send me straight to heaven. Personnel may constantly change, but the unique sound of the Swingle Singers remains as it was in 1962 (although I retain my preference for the original versions, found in Jazz Sebastian Bach and Anyone For Mozart, Bach, Handel, Vivaldi?, if only because of the greater vividness and range of tonal colors of the REAL percussion). Whatever you do, whatever arrangement you trap them into, whatever the elegance of the realizations, there is simply no comparison between the greatest inspirations of Johann Sebastian and Freddie Mercury, sorry. I am one to regret that the Swingle Singers chose the path of popularity. Now who is going to vocalize the complete Inventions and Sinfonie, Partitas, Toccatas, Well-Tempered Clavier and Goldberg Variations, plus the great organ works, and will I get to hear it before my death? I fear not.

At 64:57 (the back cover indicates 68'02", but not quite), TT is more generous than is the Swingles' custom. My copy, purchased direct from the Swingle Singers' website, is the original Swing CD 17, not this Primarily A Cappella reissue. It came with a different cover than the one displayed here (I've uploaded it). This is as good a compilation of Swingle's realizations as any, although I prefer, by far, those exclusively devoted to the classical music hits and, among their albums mixing styles and crossing over, the 2007 Beauty and the Beatbox, which has much more raw energy.