Ward Swingle
| Ward Swingle | |
|---|---|
| Birth name | Ward Lamar Swingle |
| Born |
September 21, 1927 Mobile, Alabama, United States |
| Died | January 19, 2015 (aged 87) Eastbourne, Sussex, England |
| Genres | Jazz, vocal group, classical |
| Occupation(s) | Musician, arranger |
| Instruments | Vocalist, piano |
| Years active | 1951-1990s |
| Associated acts | The Swingle Singers |
| Website | wardswingle |
Ward Lamar Swingle (September 21, 1927 – January 19, 2015) was an American vocalist and jazz musician who founded The Swingle Singers in France in 1962.
Born in Mobile, Alabama, Swingle studied music, particularly jazz, from a very young age. He learned clarinet, oboe and the piano as a child. He was playing in Mobile-area Big Bands before finishing high school. Swingle continued his music studies at the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music, from which he graduated in 1950 (Summa Cum Laude). He also met a French-born violin student, Françoise Demorest, and the couple married in 1952.
Swingle then moved to France in 1951 on a Fulbright scholarship, where he studied piano with Walter Gieseking and also worked as a rehearsal pianist for Les Ballets de Paris. In 1959, he was a founding member of Les Double Six of Paris, which specialised in scat singing of jazz standards. Swingle subsequently applied the scat singing idea to the works of Johann Sebastian Bach. This concept was the foundation for The Swingle Singers, which became fully established by 1962. The Swingle Singers released their albums Jazz Sebastian Bach and Bach's Greatest Hits in 1963. Their early recordings won five Grammy Awards.
Swingle disbanded the original Swingle Singers in 1973. He moved to London and formed an English group, which variously had the names Swingle II and the New Swingle Singers. With the new group, he expanded the earlier group's repertoire to include classical and avant-garde works along with the scat and jazz vocal arrangements.
In 1984, Swingle returned to live in America. Though he remained musical advisor for his London-based group, he devoted most of his time to workshops, guest conducting and the dissemination of his printed arrangements through his publishing company, Swingle Music.
...
Wikipedia