An homage to Sarah Vaughan: «The Divine One»

Zurich Jazz Orchestra featuring Sandy Patton (voc)

In 2024, we will be celebrating the centenary of the birth of Sarah Vaughan, one of the greatest jazz singers in history. Her career spanned almost five decades and she performed with a variety of top jazz musicians and big bands. She won two Grammy Awards and was nominated for a total of nine. In 1989 she was named an NEA Jazz Master and the critic Scott Yanow wrote that she had: “…one of the most wondrous voices of the 20th century.”

Sarah Vaughan began her professional career in the early 1940s as a singer in the big bands of Earl Hines and Billy Eckstine, where she also met and sang with important jazz innovators such as Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie and Miles Davis. For most of her highly successful career she played in small jazz groups, but she returned to big bands again and again and in 1954 began a fruitful artistic partnership with Count Basie that lasted for decades. The last album Sarah Vaughan recorded with the Count Basie Orchestra in 1981 is called “Send In The Clowns”, and Sandy Patton has preserved the Count Basie Orchestra’s original arrangements, which she has generously shared with the Zurich Jazz Orchestra.

These original arrangements will form the core of the program, and we will play some classic Count Basie instrumentals to complement the wonderfully swinging vocal charts. As always, the Zurich Jazz Orchestra’s great ensemble playing and excellent soloists will be featured.