The Real Group (SE)

SLIXS (DE)

Rajaton (FI)

The Idea of North (AU)

Naturally 7 (USA)

Vocal Sampling (CU)

Home Free (USA)

Women of the World (USA)

The Swingles (UK)

The Real Group is a groundbreaking Swedish vocal group, today considered one of the cornerstones of modern a cappella music. With the voice as their sole instrument they have created a unique musical expression, moving seamlessly across the boundaries of genre, with jazz, pop and Northern European choral music as a strong foundation.

Formed in 1984, The Real Group has been touring across the globe for more than 30 years. They’re is widely established and esteemed, not only for their ability to create distinctively varied, playful and inventive arrangements within the frame of their five voices, but also for their warm, intelligent original compositions. In 2019, the group was awarded the “Lifetime Achievement Award” by The Contemporary A Cappella Society in the United States.

The Real Group is frequently touring, with large audiences in Asia, North America and Europe. Recent tours have also taken them to New Zealand and South Africa, among other places. Their way of combining perfection with great warmth and personality has made them accessible to music enthusiasts in general as well as to the more demanding ear. Their wide repertoire and musical excellence have made it possible for the group to collaborate with symphony orchestras, jazz groups, pop bands and notable artists such as Barbara Hendricks, Toots Thielemans and Sir George Martin, as well as performing for the Royal Family in Sweden, opening the FIFA World Cup in South Korea and singing for state officials all over the world - including the Emperor of Japan.

Apart from their extensive touring, The Real Group has produced more than 20 CD’s in their own name, TV-shows on national TV as well as being artistic directors for several a cappella festivals, the most recent being the annual SMV Real Group Festival, which was launched in Creston, Iowa (US) in 2018.

The Finnish word Rajaton translates as "boundless" – a word that so
accurately describes the way this six-voice a cappella ensemble
approaches music. Regularly performing around a hundred concerts and
workshops each year, Rajaton exposes their audiences to the kind of
diversity of repertoire, singing style, and stage presentation that
has made them a phenomenon on the world stage.



Performing at concert halls, jazz and choral festivals, and with
various orchestras, this distinct group of musicians approaches all
styles of music with the same level of commitment and integrity,
making it difficult to imagine an audience that they could not
inspire, or a type of music they could not make their own. In their
native Finland, Rajaton is a bona fide pop phenomenon, successfully
bridging the gap that often exists between classical and mainstream
convention.



Rajaton has released 17 different albums. In 2020, Rajaton celebrates
23 years of music-making with one double platinum, three platinum and
eight gold records in Finland under their belt, as their worldwide
record sales are drawing over 400.000 copies altogether.



Ever seeking new artistic challenges, the group has grown immeasurably
through collaborations with other a cappella artists, including The
King’s Singers and The Real Group, as well as productions with film
directors and choreographers. But it is perhaps their deep passion for
choral art, their generosity of spirit and their sheer enjoyment of
singing that has won the hearts and acclaim of audiences and critics
everywhere. Their energy – infectious; their ability to entertain and
inspire – Rajaton!



The voice is boundless.

The Idea of North is a quintet of musicians, serious about their music without taking themselves too seriously. The members of The Idea of North (TION) have studied in some of Australia’s foremost music schools – the Elder Conservatorium attached to Adelaide University, the Victorian College of the Arts, and the Canberra School of Music attached to the ANU. Starting out as a hobby way back in university days, the group of friends quickly realised the potential for more and went full-time in 1998. 

TION has developed an enviable reputation within Australia and overseas, and has been described by James Morrison as ‘the best contemporary vocal quartet in Australia’. TION has performed often with James Morrison and both he and Don Burrows are featured on a number of TION’s recordings, alongside such artists as Lior, Kristin Berardi, Rajaton (Finland) and Elena Kats-Chernin. The group has also established a very significant reputation overseas where they travel frequently for festivals, concerts, workshops and corporate events. Countries regularly visited include the USA and many different countries in both Europe and Asia. They have hosted and/or performed at a number of major festivals in such arenas as The Lincoln Centre in New York, the Kennedy Centre for the Performing Arts in Washington DC and similar venues in Asia, and performed alongside vocal group greats such as The Manhattan Transfer, Take 6, Naturally 7 and The Real Group (Sweden).

In 2003 TION won The Harmony Sweepstakes in the USA. This is one of the largest international a cappella competitions in the world, open to any a cappella group of three to seven people singing in any musical style or genre. In its (then) twenty-year history, this was the first time that the winner was an ensemble from outside the USA. It is one of many awards for performing, writing, arranging and recording that TION has garnered over the years. They have produced thirteen albums (their seventh, a collaboration with James Morrison, won the 2010 ARIA award for ‘Best Jazz Album’, their eighth was nominated for the same award and also won the Limelight ‘Best Jazz Album’ award, and their tenth won the 2013 ARIA award, again for Best Jazz Album) and a live, in-concert DVD. 2014 saw the group honoured by an induction into the ACT Hall of Fame. In 2015, the group met and fell musically in love with Kaichiro Kitamura, vocal percussionist extraordinaire, and made the leap to expand to a quintet formation. They have enjoyed a significant rise in popularity and breadth of audience base since then, with Kai’s incredible talents adding a new, thrilling dimension to the group’s sound.

( Photo Credit: YAMIL LAGE )

Everything began in 1989, as a game in their leisure at Havana Arts University, when they simulated the sound of di erent instruments with their voices. This way and, little by little, they went tuning their throats to the sound of the metals, the percussions and the strings and created the unique sound of Vocal Sampling.

1993 “Una forma mas” was their debut album. Henceforth, the sextet conformed by professional musicians has been protagonist of a beautiful musical career that has taken them to the most important and diverse scenarios all over the world. The group have gained the attention of artists such as Bobby McFerrin, Peter Gabriel and Paul Simon.

In 1996, at the artists’ invitation, Vocal Sampling performed at the Montreux Jazz Festival alongside artists such as Chaka Khan, Phil Collins, Mick Hucknall and Toots Thielemans to celebrate Quincy Jones’s 50 years career.

Vocal Sampling has had a very busy tour schedule. Every year they have been present in the most important circuits of the World Music and Jazz of Europe, as well as Japan, Latin and North America.... Explanade Hall in Singapore, Ronie Scott Club in London, New Morning Club in Paris, Vienna Opera House, Opera Theatre in Tel Aviv, Hollywood Bawl in L.A., among others, have brought their music to all kind of audiences, as well as festivals like WOMAD Festival in England and Spain, Montreux Jazz Festival, Vienna, Vancouver, Paris, New York, Miami, WOMEX in Berlin, Paleo Festival Nyon in Switzerland, Festival Printemps de Bourges in France, April Jazz in Finland,. ..Following a hugely successful tour of the United States in 1995 they have continued to tour throughout Latin America, Europe and Japan.

In August 2000 during the BBC Proms, Vocal Sampling made a huge impact when they performed in a sold-out Royal Albert Hall. On the back of this success, in 2001 the group released a very successful album, “Cambio de Tiempo” that got 3 nominations for the “Latin Grammy Awards 2002 ” on the categories of “Best Recording Engineering”, “Best Tropical Music Album” - “Producer of the Year and Best Produced Song”.

2006, release of the album “Akapelleando”. 2013, on December, they performed at the Shanghai’s World Music Festival. 2014, they made a tour around Europe and Asia, including festivals in Madrid, Canarias and Borneo. During that summer, they performed in festivals in Brazil and Mexico. On December they were nominated in Cuba to the Luca's Award for their most recent video “El lunes que viene empiezo” which will be included in their next CD that is already in progress.

Vocal Sampling has performed in two of the three editions of the Festival Leo Brouwer de Música de Cámara that has taken place in Havana. 2015, a new show “So Sampling” will be presented with concerts in Mexico and China.... 2017, their latest album "Así de Sampling" has been launched with concerts in Europe, Asia and Latin America. 2018/2019 : différents tours in Europe and Asia. New CD release in China with concerts and TV show.

2020 :  To celebrate its 30th anniversary, Vocal Sampling wishes to mark this event with an original creation that will reveal a whole new repertoire, but also new facets of its vocal talent and a collaboration with a symphony orchestra.  They will offer a classical and contemporary repertoire which will consist mainly of works written by great Cuban composers as well as by René Baños Pascual, musical director and band leader.

Prestigious concerts are already scheduled in october 2020 with the Austrian Tonkunstler Orchester at the Musikverein in Vienna and at the Festspiel St-Poelten (Austria),and in February 2021 with the Württembergische Philharmonie Reutlingen at the BASF Feierabendhaus in Ludwigshafen (Germany)

That Home Free is country music’s only real a cappella group is a novelty that, on the radio or on record, might only occur to listeners after the fact, since arrangements that are so fully fleshed out — and we do mean fleshed out, as opposed to machined out — have a way of tricking the ear. In concert, of course, it’s a different story: all at once, from first row to last, jaws drop at the first sight of all those throats in action, followed by nodding, dancing and even crying as the group’s powerful musical storytelling unfolds.

Home Free are returning with their fourth studio album, Dive Bar Saints, and there are a lot of new wrinkles to their story. But that most critical element remains intact. Listening to the leadoff track, “Remember This,” you might wonder if they’ve finally just given in and added instrumentation to their previously all-vocal catalog? Not to worry; that’s just an optical illusion. “We’re completely a cappella. At all times,” Tim Foust assures us, laughing that the question still comes up. Foust is the bass player of the group… the bass voice player, that is. “Never say never,” he adds, asked if they might ever consider giving Nashville’s finest studio musicians some employment, “but that’s what sets us apart. I mean, when we collaborated with Charlie Daniels, we let him play his fiddle, but that’s about it.”

So there’s no breaking news alert to be had there, on the all-vocals front. But Dive Bar Saints does have a few other fresh headlines for the group, as their first album since they took full control of their recording career. Home Free had been on a major label ever since finding national fame via NBC’s “The Sing-Off,” the a cappella competition show they won in 2013, after more than a decade on the road. This new album, though, is coming out on Home Free Records, which will be distributed by The Orchard globally. And it’s not just the imprint that’s changing as they take the reins. On Dive Bar Saints, 10 of the 12 tracks are newly penned songs — the greatest amount of original material they’ve ever included on an album — with two band members stepping up in a big way as featured co-writers.

Making an album of almost exclusively new tunes wouldn’t necessarily be such a huge deal for most other country acts, but for Home Free, there was the possibility that fans might see it as a violation of their prime directive, or at least a shift away from what they’ve come to know and love — which is that this is the only country group in the world that delivers joltingly fresh, new, all-vocal arrangements of well-known songs from in and out of the genre. So the group took it to the fans, asking them if they’d mind an album of predominantly unheard songs, and those devotees made their own voices heard: The “covers” part isn’t what we care about most — don’t worry, we’ve got you covered.

“I really do feel like this is a turning point for us,” says Rob Lundquist, the group’s tenor harmony singer. “It’s the first time where we are going to have more original content than covers. It feels great now that we’ve had the community of songwriters actually coming to us and presenting us with songs that they wanted to be on the album. But it’s coming from within, too — Tim, our bass singer, co-wrote a couple of songs, and Austin Brown, our high tenor, co-wrote a couple songs.” Adds Brown, “Every time we have mentioned we have an album coming out and that it’s almost all originals, people explode. Lord knows we wouldn’t have expected that, but all signs point toward it being not just what fans want, but what they crave.”

Between the one-of-a-kind nature of the group, their established global appeal, and the types of theaters they usually play, Home Free are not exactly what you would call a “bar band.” From the fall of 2019 through the fall of 2020, they’ll be on their Dive Bar Saints World Tour, playing about a hundred shows in 16 nations, triumphantly returning to the UK for the fourth time and hitting other European countries like Italy and Switzerland for the first. The U.S. leg of that tour will be capped off by a special two-night stand at Nashville’s iconic Ryman Auditorium. All to say: very few actual honky-tonks are on the itinerary.

For more than half a century, The Swingles have pushed the boundaries of vocal music. The seven young singers that make up today’s London-based group are driven by the same innovative spirit that has defined the five-time Grammy® winners since they first made waves in the 1960s. At a time when a cappella music is more popular than ever, The Swingles are recognised as masters of their craft.

In 1963, American-born Ward Swingle first assembled a group of Parisian session singers to sing Bach’s keyboard music. The resulting album, Jazz Sebastian Bach, launched the Swingle Singers to fame. Since then, they have won five Grammy® awards and made more than 50 recordings, with a repertoire that has grown to include a huge variety of music, including new original songs. They have also appeared on numerous film and TV soundtracks, including Sex and the City, Milk, Grey’s Anatomy and Glee. In 2017, they co-wrote and performed a song for the end credits of Alexander Payne’s acclaimed film Downsizing.

Released in March 2017, The Swingles’ latest project is Folklore, a diverse collection of folk music from around the world, inspired by their international travels and featuring collaborations with traditional artists. With creative arrangements that transport these well-loved songs into the group’s unique and rich sound world, the results are powerful and surprising.

The group’s versatility has led to collaborations with artists as diverse as the Modern Jazz Quartet, Jamie Cullum and Labrinth. Luciano Berio was one of the first composers to explore the sound of the Swingles’ amplified voices in an orchestral setting with his groundbreaking Sinfonia. The group continue to perform the piece to great acclaim around the world, with recent performances at San Francisco’s Davies Symphony Hall, London’s Royal Festival Hall and Milan’s La Scala; they look forward to bringing it to new audiences for its 50th anniversary in 2018-19.

In addition to a busy touring schedule that regularly takes them to North and South America, Europe and Asia, The Swingles present their own London A Cappella Festival at Kings Place each January in partnership with Ikon Arts Management. The festival is the first of its kind in the capital, welcoming the finest vocal talent from around the world.