Shall We Dance?

SOMM RECORDINGS is delighted to announce the debut recording of composer-pianist Iain Farrington’s Art Deco Trio, featuring 15 new instrumental arrangements blending classical and jazz influences of songs by George Gershwin.

This CD reissue (put out in 1990) may be hard to find, now that Savoy has been sold to the Japanese Denon label. Originally issued under flugelhornist Wilbur Harden's name, the 1958 quartet (which also includes pianist Tommy Flanagan, bassist George Duvivier and drummer Granville T. Hogan) performs nine Rodgers & Hammerstein songs mostly taken from The King and I, plus a reprise and an alternate take of "Hello Young Lovers." The interpretations are tasteful yet swinging, and include such familiar tunes as "Getting to Know You" and "We Kiss In a Shadow," along with some obscurities. Enjoyable music.

Dancer, actor, and singer Fred Astaire worked steadily in various entertainment media during nine decades of the 20th century. The most celebrated dancer in the history of film, with appearances in 31 movie musicals between 1933 and 1968 (and a special Academy Award in recognition of his accomplishments in them), Astaire also danced on-stage and on television (garnering two Emmy Awards in the process), and he even treated listening audiences to his accomplished tap dancing on records and on his own radio series. He appeared in another eight non-musical feature films and on numerous television programs, resulting in an Academy Award nomination and a third Emmy Award as an actor. His light tenor voice and smooth, conversational phrasing made him an ideal interpreter for the major songwriters of his era, and he introduced dozens of pop standards, many of them written expressly for him, by such composers as Harold Arlen, Irving Berlin, George Gershwin, Jerome Kern, Burton Lane, Frank Loesser, Johnny Mercer, Cole Porter, Arthur Schwartz, Harry Warren, and Vincent Youmans.