Art Deco Trio

Blending jazz and classical traditions via inventive, often witty interpretations shaped by pianist Iain Farrington, the Art Deco Trio performs on clarinet, saxophone, and piano. The group issued its first recording, Gershwinicity, in 2021 and followed it in 2023 with Classical Changes, which presented Farrington’s jazz reworkings of well-known classical pieces.

Clarinetist Peter Sparks, saxophonist Kyle Horch, and pianist Iain Farrington form the ensemble. Sparks trained at Cambridge University under Dame Thea King before continuing at the Royal Academy of Music with Nick Rodwell and Angela Malsbury. Since 2016 he has served as co-principal clarinetist of the English National Opera while also performing with other leading British orchestras and working as a session musician; he holds a professorship at the Royal College of Music in London. His bachelor’s and master’s degrees were completed at Northwestern University in Chicago under Frederick Hemke. Horch received a scholarship for postgraduate study at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama with Stephen Trier. He has performed and recorded with numerous British ensembles and belongs to Michael Law’s Piccadilly Dance Orchestra; since 1991 he has taught at the Royal College of Music. Farrington attended Cambridge University and the Royal College of Music and has worked extensively as pianist, organist, composer, and arranger across the United Kingdom as well as in South Africa and Hong Kong. He has appeared as performer and had compositions programmed at the BBC Proms, and his organ arrangement of Elgar’s Pomp and Circumstance No. 5 was featured at the 2011 wedding of Prince William and Catherine Middleton. In 2023 he was commissioned to write a piece for the Coronation of Charles III and Camilla.

After collaborating for several years in assorted British ensembles, the three musicians formed the Art Deco Trio and entered the studio in 2020 to record their debut album, Gershwinicity. Farrington supplied all the arrangements tailored to the distinctive clarinet-saxophone-piano lineup. The title derives from a 2018 orchestral suite by Farrington that he later adapted for the group; the recording itself consists of George Gershwin material. The trio’s second album, Classical Changes, appeared in 2023 and incorporated two further Farrington suites—A Sea Shanty Shake-Up, originally scored for orchestra, and Lay My Burden Down, first written for organ—alongside additional classical favorites in his arrangements.