Bios

This is...

Swing Shift

Your home for a cappella vocal jazz !!!

Bios

Holly Pitrago

Holly Pitrago is originally from the small community of Croswell, Michigan where she grew up studying music. First came piano at age 7. At age 11 she followed in her father’s footsteps and began playing bassoon. Playing such a unique instrument at a young age opened up wonderful opportunities including a tour of Europe with Blue Lake Fine Arts Camp, scholarships for college, and a year as first chair with the Detroit Symphony Civic Orchestra. During all of this Holly loved to sing as well and began performing at weddings and community events. As an undergrad Holly earned a B.B.A. in Economics and a B.A. in French for International Trade at Eastern Michigan University.

But art was in her blood so she accepted an offer for a graduate assistantship to earn an M.A in Theatre Arts at her alma mater. While there her roles included Cinderella in Into the Woods, Anna in Tintypes, Luisa in Nine, and April in Company. Upon graduating, Holly began a career in the theatre that soon took her to New York City. Music and theatre combined into jobs with dinner theatres, a cruise ship, and children’s musical theatre including many productions with Yates Musical Theatre. Acting and business combined into working as a product specialist for Scion on the auto show circuit.

Holly’s film and television credits include A Beautiful Mind, a spot for Coca-Cola, and an appearance on the daytime serial Passions. Holly is delighted to live in Los Angeles now where she continues to study music and work as a singer and an actor. She has found a diverse set of new opportunities from sketch comedy at Second City and professional Christmas caroling with Michetti/Knowles Entertainment to session singing. Her vocal sessions include an episode of “The Simpsons” and scores for feature films “Evan Almighty” and “Watchmen”.

Holly joined Swing Shift in 2009. She sings mostly lead (top) soprano, but she herself enjoys mixing it up and singing second soprano on some songs. She likes singing second she says because it helps to exercise her sight-reading chops.

You can learn more about Holly and check out her demo at www.ProSingersAccess.com/HollyPitrago.

Dina Torok

Janette La Bella

Janette was born in Hastings, England. She studied music at the Laurel’s Academy of music in Hastings. When she was 17, she travelled by car to the Middle East with her mother and step father. They would drive through the desert for days on end, and sitting in the back of the car she had little to do, except to count the grains of desert sand. This is when she tuned into the voices of The Andrews Sisters that were playing on the radio and started picking out the harmonies.

After she returned home and finished her studies, she moved to Germany, where she auditioned for some shows with the American Military. She played Sally Bowles in Cabaret, as well at Nancy in Oliver. One of her favourite roles was Meg Brockie in Brigadoon. While doing theatre, Janette and her husband Paul got together with some friends from one of the shows and formed Next Monday, a very successful a cappella group in the Worms area of Germany. One day in church she heard and was enchanted by a gospel choir. She joined the church and the choir. She sang with the MTV Gospel choir in Heidelberg, as well as her a cappella group, for seven years.

In 2004 Janette’s husband got relocated to Edwards Air Force Base, and the couple made the Big Move to the USA. It took a couple of years to get over her home sickness and being in such a “big, scary place”, but then she ventured out and met some people involved in regional theatre. Janette auditioned for and won some roles in local plays and musicals. Her most recent appearance was in The Odd Couple, at the 2009 Antelope Valley Fair, in which she played Cecily Pidgeon.

She has also sung with various choruses and gospel groups one of which appeared in the televised Christmas Celebration with GMWA at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in LA with host, Neal Sedaka. However, she really wanted to sing a cappella again and she finally, through a friend, found Swing Shift. “This is the best a cappella experience I have ever had. They really keep me on my toes!” she says. She has only been with the group since April, but is having more and more fun and hopes to soon do some writing/arranging of her own.

When not singing with Swing Shift, Janette works for Heidelberg Instruments in Torrance, CA and in her spare time, she volunteers at the Animal Shelter in Lancaster. She enjoys urban mushing with her dog, Piccolo, whom she fostered along with five other siblings when they were abandoned under a tree at 2 weeks old.

Joel Dalton

Hailing From Arizona, Joel sung as a child with the Phoenix Boys Choir, touring around the world singing with headline acts such as Bobby Mcferrin, Emmy Lou Harris, the Doc Severinson Orchestra, and the Boston Pops. He studied vocal jazz at the University of Arizona, and toured with their vocal jazz group Everyman Jack.

Joel Graduated from the Los Angeles Music Academy and since then has been working as a vocalist in the LA area performing and recording everything from jazz, R&B, Doo Wop, to classical and country, with many groups including The original Cannibal and the Headhunters, and award winning vocal jazz group Ready Willing & Mabel.

Joel joined Swing Shift in 2009 and enjoys immersing himself in the rich harmonies that comprise the group's signature sound. He also enjoys the opportunity to display his solo abilities that the vocal jazz ensemble setting encourages.

Phil Azelton

One could not find two peas in a pod more like Richard and Phil. Both got into barbershop in high school, and both became smitten with the singing of the Four Freshmen and the Hi-Lo's, and began writing vocal arrangements in their teen years.

After receiving a degree in composition from the University of Arizona, Phil moved to California where he completed his Masters degree in choral conducting from the University of Southern California. At UCLA he sang with the Gregg Smith Singers and toured with diverse groups such as the Young Americans, the Kids Next Door and the Norman Luboff Choir.

His choral arrangements were first performed at an ACDA convention in Hawaii and consequently published by Hal Leonard and Jenson. Phil’s arrangements are widely sung in high school and college choirs. Not surprisingly, many of his charts are in the Swing Shift repertoire and are much loved by the singers and audiences alike.

Before heading the choral music department at Van Nuys High School in California, Phil spent many years “behind the scenes” in film music production in all the major studios in Hollywood. Now semi-retired, he sings regularly with a madrigal group, Oriana, a vocal jazz sextet, Swing Shift, a nine-voice swing choir, B.E.S.T. (which he directs), a highly-regarded local concert choir, Cantori Domino, and in his copious spare time, Phil serves as the music director for his home church in Pacific Palisades.

Richard Gilinsky

Richard began his a cappella career when he formed a barbershop quartet at Omaha Central High School. They performed at school shows, dances, and at local club meetings. His interest in vocal jazz also began there after he heard the Four Freshmen's recordings of Tuxedo Junction and Blue World. These were musically earth-shaking events for the nascent arranger who, up until that fateful hearing, had tried nothing more daring than a take-down of the Crew Cuts' Crazy 'Bout You Baby.

College days were spent at Yale, then, as now, a magnet for budding a cappellans. There were probably 20 or so a cappella groups during his years there, the top of the heap belonging to The Whiffenpoofs, of course. Richard joined one of these, The Bachelors, his sophomore year singing baritone, leading the group for two years, and contributing many arrangements to their repertoire. The Bachelors performed up and down the east coast from Smith College to the Palm Beach Florida country club circuit. However, it was during junior year that the vocal jazz bug bit hard, and Richard formed a quartet to sing his first vocal jazz arrangements. Five Brothers, so named because the quartet was always accompanied by their inseparable pianist, also played their own backing, including drums, guitar, and trumpet. This was pretty much unheard of in the buttoned-down Ivy League ethos of the time, but the group gained favor, played local and some distant campuses and some New Haven clubs as well. Senior year found the group in Carnegie Hall where they participated in an all-college jazz concert. Five Brothers changed the vocal landscape at Yale and beyond in those budding years of vocal jazz, and it changed Richard's vision of the musical world ahead of him, perhaps more years down the road than he imagined at the time.

With quite a few years out to raise a family, Richard then succumbed to the call of his muse in 2002 when he formed Swing Shift. The original ensemble was an SSATB quintet, but after a year, the group was expanded to six singers. A few years back, Richard had tried his hand at a six-part arrangement of Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe for an MGM tribute to several films of the 40's and 50's. The rich sound of six voices had stayed with him, so it was inevitable that he would expand the group to a sextet. The group has been in that format ever since, with two brief periods during which the group was expanded to seven voices.

Richard has remained active in many musical ensembles, including, over the past few years, Cindy Bourquin's SMC Vocal jazz ensemble, Nike St. Clair's SMC chamber choir, the madrigal ensemble Oriana, and various church choirs. Vocal jazz remains Richard's passion, however, both as an inspiration for his arrangements and as a platform for performance. Swing Shift has grown and matured, and with each new edition of singers, the promise of the original idea has increasingly been fulfilled.