The Swingles have been challenging the boundaries of vocal music for 60 years.
They have earned 5 Grammy® Awards and are recipients of multiple prestigious international accolades.
Their seamlessly blended and timeless sound quickly established them as one of the world’s most beloved and admired vocal groups, and their intricate arrangements remain unparalleled. With their trademark vocal dexterity and innate musicality, the current seven singers are masters of their craft, constantly seeking new ways of reimagining jazz, folk, pop and classical music from their ever-growing repertoire alongside a rich vein of new original material.
The Swingles have always made creative use of close-mic amplification, and in the last decade, have added unique live audio looping techniques to their stage performances – an immersive layering up of vocals and musical textures to mesmerise the audience.
Today’s Swingles are Mallika Bhagwat (India/UK), Joanna Goldsmith-Eteson (UK), Katelyn Dietz (US), Oliver Griffiths (UK), Jamie Wright (UK), Owen Butcher (UK) and Tom Hartley (UK).
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American-born Ward Swingle first assembled a group of Parisian session singers (originally named Les Swingle Singers) to sing Bach’s music for the keyboard in 1962. The resulting album ‘Jazz Sebastian Bach’ was a huge hit, breaking new musical ground and launching The Swingles to fame. Since then, the group has released more than 50 albums encompassing a huge variety of music, fuelled by Ward Swingle’s pioneering spirit and wide-ranging musical tastes.
The Swingles have appeared on film and TV soundtracks, including ‘The Two Popes’, ‘Sex and the City’, ‘Wedding Crashers’ and ‘Glee’, as well as singing the theme for Italy’s beloved TV series ‘Superquark’. In 2017, they co-wrote and performed a song for the end credits of Alexander Payne’s film ‘Downsizing’, and in 2021 sang on Disney’s block-buster, ‘Cruella’. Their prolific output of music videos has earned them millions of views and new audiences around the world.
In 2010, The Swingles founded the hugely successful London A Cappella Festival. Some ten years on, in the face of Covid, they re-created their live workshops and in-person education modules, launching an online education programme for remote and blended learning. Their genre-inclusive approach to music-making has led to great artistic collaborations with artists as diverse as the Modern Jazz Quartet, New York Voices, Jamie Cullum, The King’s Singers, Peter Hollens and Labrinth. Revered experimental composer, Luciano Berio, was one of the first composers to explore the sound of The Swingles’ amplified voices in an orchestral setting with his ground-breaking Sinfonia. Notable performances include those with San Francisco Symphony (with Michael Tilson Thomas), ORF Vienna Radio (with Marin Alsop), London Philharmonic Orchestra (with Vladimir Jurowski), and the Orchestra of La Scala, Milan (with John Axelrod).
The Swingles have a keen sense of social responsibility and are committed to devoting a large part of each year to work in education around the world, bringing their technical skills in the vocal arts together with stagecraft, improvisation, genre versatility, songwriting and arranging.
“Stunning reinventions of songs by the likes of John Martyn, Elbow and Mumford & Sons, with subtle beatboxing and audacious harmonies... superhero singing to truly raise goosebumps.” – THE GUARDIAN
“Whether performing with the National Symphony Orchestra or in a cappella settings, The Swingle Singers were never less than dazzling” - THE WASHINGTON POST
“The vocal and choral world has changed considerably in the last 50 years... But The Swingles have managed to hold onto to their distinctive niche and continue to thrive.” – CHICAGO SUN-TIMES
“The legendary Swingle Singers, in their latest incarnation, navigated the dauntingly virtuosic terrain with breathtaking and often quite beautiful results.” – BAY AREA REPORTER
“The Swingle Singers pitched those mysteriously lovely chords with laser-like precision... a triumph” – THE DAILY TELEGRAPH
“How a group that has been going since the early 1960s can continue to create the same wonderfully pure and inspiring sounds that first made it famous is a mystery.” – IRISH EXAMINER
“Without question one of the best close harmony groups in the world... fantastic singers” – GARETH MALONE OBE
“Talented, talented people” – JAMIE CULLUM
“Their ensemble singing—including group phrasing, breathing, diction, and passion—was immaculate” - JAZZ HISTORY ONLINE
THE SWINGLES are:
Mallika Bhagwat / Joanna Goldsmith-Eteson / Katelyn Dietz /
Oliver Griffiths / Owen Butcher / Jamie Wright / Tom Hartley