Half-Past Swing

Half-Past Swing is the new release from Washington DC's hot jazz vocal group, Uptown Vocal Jazz Quartet. It engages you in the refreshingly lush sound of 4 voices swinging in jazz chord harmony against a suberb instrumental backdrop. A multitude of excellent rhythm and horn players back the singers and create a diversity of textures, rhythms, and styles from track to track, including pop-jazz, ballad, samba, bop, and stompin big-band swing a la Basie. All arrangements were written by present and former members of the vocal quartet, and several original compositions by group leader Ginny Carr are included among the big band and bop classics. Horn arrangements were written by Chip McNeill, Arturo Sandoval's tenor man and chief arranger.