John Wilson at The Grange Festival 2026: Celebrating Sinatra

Audience members had come from far and wide, making a kind of pilgrimage to this unlikely, austerely magical venue set in the Hampshire countryside. In recent years John Wilson and his hand-picked, high-octane orchestra have explored a wide range of Western art music both live and for the Chandos label. Still, the history books may rate concerts such as this (there are further dates on June 5 and 6) as discreetly momentous. While material composed and arranged for Broadway, Hollywood and/or the vintage recording studios of the 1950s had of course been revived before Wilson’s arrival on the scene, there was seldom much in the way of textual verisimilitude or stylistic accuracy involved. Interpretative flair rarely if ever extended beyond that of the vocalist in the spotlight. Wilson has patented a different kind of show, switching focus to revive a genre of orchestral writing that had threatened to disappear altogether and does not always survive as notes on a page. Much preparatory work is involved in the creation of apparently effortless sequences in which the playing is not just seductive but also authentic, every dot, comma and ‘period’ inflexion honed to perfection. Working with what was then billed as the John Wilson Orchestra, the conductor unleashed a similar cache of showstoppers and lesser known numbers to mark Frank Sinatra’s centenary at the BBC Proms; Jamie Parker was among the soloists then. More recently Wilson brought selections focused on Richard Rodgers and George Gershwin to The Grange Festival in 2017 and 2019, the latter featuring the vocals of Matt Ford. Last year he directed a whole album of Sinatra outtakes and unfinished arrangements for Seth MacFarlane.

Aficionados present at the 2015 Prom will have noted that the band on this occasion was a little smaller, the set list no mere reprise. It was fascinating to hear the ensemble in a smaller, drier, 622-seat auditorium more closely approximating to the acoustic to be found in a record studio than the resonant barn of the Royal Albert Hall. There was no chorus, just three miked-up soloists, Matt Ford very much the star of the show. Granted, he lacks Sinatra’s or even Seth MacFarlane’s charisma (who doesn’t?) but he applies Sinatra’s phrasing to a more Gene Kelly-ish sound, knows how to swing, and never gets in the way of his ‘accompanists’. The guest artists were used sparingly. Jamie Parker’s theatrical nous was evident in ‘Well, Did You Evah!’, that sassy duet sensibly spirited i.e. spacious enough for us to catch every word. The same cannot quite be said of the performance given as part of the stage version of High Society playing currently at London’s Barbican Theatre. Wilson, Ford and Parker presumably adhered to the Skip Martin / Johnny Green movie score incarnation of Cole Porter. The Overture was also given, one of several purely instrumental interludes not necessarily related to the Sinatra theme. 

Along the way there were the expected pops – Nelson Riddle’s famously eruptive, hard-swinging arrangement of ‘I’ve Got You Under My Skin’ and Billy May’s definitive take on ‘ Come fly with me’ both superb. The comparative rarities included ‘A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square’ in a dreamy version arranged by Robert Farnon for Sinatra Sings Great Songs From Great Britain plus a Farnon instrumental tentatively identified above. Ford swung brightly in Mancini’s ‘The Days of Wine and Roses’ as he did at the Proms in Wilson’s 2019 compendium of classic songs and scores from the Warner Brothers studios. Their encore was more of a surprise. ‘New York, New York’ may have been the standout song associated with Sinatra’s last years but it postdates the rest of Wilson’s chosen material by more than a decade. ‘My Way’ was nowhere to be seen, presumably not nearly classy enough, though everyone will have had their own private list of regrettable omissions. Mine would be ‘One for My Baby (and One More for the Road)’. Then again, perhaps its particular impact has more to do with Sinatra’s personal delivery of Johnny Mercer’s lyrics to Arlen’s meandering melody, the Riddle orchestration for once an optional extra. Is that why it didn’t make the cut?  

Clare Teal did exceptionally well with ‘The Folks who live on the hill’, almost if not quite nailing the particular combination of world-weary scepticism, nostalgia and resignation with which Peggy Lee reimagined the generic dream of every young couple. The number was delivered in the superb Riddle arrangement which Sinatra both commissioned and conducted in 1957 for Lee’s comeback album, The Man I Love. Teal sang the words as included on that track, updating ‘Darby and Joan’ to ‘Baby and Joe’. Another remarkable moment came towards the end of ‘Quiet Nights of Quiet Stars’, a bossa nova which fades out conventionally enough on disc. Here the effect was extended and achieved without electronic assistance, the strings still producing their breathtaking sonority at low decibels until the surviving wisp of sound fell silent.  

If the swing era’s iconic mid-song brass and horn breaks were not invariably delivered with comparable finesse, no such carping could be levelled at the woodwind. And those strings were simply beyond praise. The saturated vibrato-rich sound allied to cliff-edge dynamics and purposeful phrasing made every entry a thing of wonder. Sensational above the stave, a relatively small contingent of violins (14 in total) produced sounds perfectly matched to an illuminated background of shining stars against deepest blue. No trickery necessary and no false sentimentality, just glorious music-making. Wilson’s presentation was typically crisp: no nonsense in spoken links shared with Ford, just a few salient facts, often starting the next song with applause still in progress. In this repertoire the team have no peer.

As ever at The Grange the intimacy of the shabby-chic theatre and the splendour of the Greek Revival pile into which it is wedged cast their own spell. The isolated location lacks the cosy charm of some other country house venues, compensating with a lake and grand, unhindered views of the countryside. Covering the Festival as a whole, the beautifully produced programme booklet omits individual songwriter and arranger credits but includes an intriguing essay by Guy Verrall-Withers gamely pulling its Sinatra-themed evenings into the context of a series mainly devoted to opera. You can still catch La Bohème, Giulio Cesare, La Clemenza di Tito, Eugene Onegin and twin evenings tracing the shared DNA of opera, soul, and gospel with Daniel Bartholomew-Poyser and the Welsh National Opera Orchestra!