Patrick von Wiegandt is a whirlwind. You'll spot him in Hollywood, then London, then Hawaii, then New York, and everywhere he lands he seems to know all the hep cats. How to explain the "Swanky" phenomenon? Part of it is the 40 years he's been in the music biz.
He's made the transition from musician to producer, promotor, engineer and then for the last decade back to performer. After playing guitar and singing in bands as a teenager in Hawaii he worked in sales for all the major labels in New York, then moved to LA and learned from Grammy-winning engineers and producers while working with stars as diverse as Barbara Streisand and Alice Cooper. He's been a voting member of the Recording Academy (Grammys) since 1983.
He knows how to listen to a recording in process and hear it as the audience will. Despite an exuberant and jovial manner, he makes sure whatever he is working on will hit just right. It's to our reward that he's nurtured a lifelong love of classic jazz and turned his considerable vocal talent in our direction to record a series of great albums with the best players he could gather on two continents.
I'm going to put it out there that my first impression of a set of albums titled "Swanky" with a tuxedoed man on the cover was that I needed to prepare myself to endure an ego project. My own tastes tend towards the looser trad bands playing the streets of New Orleans,
