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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 it's acclaimed tag debut with Gershwinicity (SOMMCD 0631) in 2021. Also featuring five African-American Spirituals and three sea shanties, Classical Change takes the early-20th-century fashion for InchJazzing the ClassicsInch at face value with a collection of 20 first recordings of scintillating new arrangements, translating the works' Inchoriginal sober environment into one that was more intoxicatedInch, 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 InchWhat'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 movingInch. Fanfare approvingly commented InchN
