In 2024 we will celebrate 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 wide range of top jazz musicians and big bands. She won two Grammy Awards and was nominated for nine. In 1989 she was named an NEA Jazz Master and critic Scott Yanow wrote that she was '...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 met and sang with such jazz innovators 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 on several occasions 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 was 'Send In The Clowns' in 1981, 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 programme, and we will play some classic Count Basie instrumentals to complement the wonderfully swinging vocal charts. As always, the great ensemble playing and excellent soloists of the Zurich Jazz Orchestra will be featured.