Amy London to Release New Solo Album ALTO MADNESS on FiveCat Records
The record spotlights compositions by Benny Carter and other alto players, recorded with pianist Janice Friedman and bassist Ralph Hamperian.
New York jazz vocalist, lyricist and educator Amy London has announced Alto Madness, out October 16 on the FiveCat label. The album features London on vocals, Mike Hashim (alto sax), Janice Friedman (piano), Ralph Hamperian (bass), Mike Campenni (drums), Ron Horton (trumpet, flugelhorn), and special guests The Royal Bopsters, marking London's first solo album in eight years.
London, a founding member of the Royal Bopsters, the acclaimed four-part harmony group with whom she has toured and recorded two studio albums, features the group as special guests on Alto Madness's lead single, 'New York Afternoon.' Current members are London, Jeanne O'Connor, Dylan Pramuk and newest member, Tyler Bassett.
Memorializing London's five-year, weekly residency at the storied jazz venue Swing 46, Alto Madness captures and continues the bandstand camaraderie, musical chemistry, and London's close collaboration with bandleader and altoist Mike Hashim. After 27 years, in 2025 Swing 46 closed its doors on New York City's Restaurant Row and has been taken over by jazz pianist and impresario Spike Wilner, who renovated it and reopened it as Jazzcultural in March 2026. Hashim, a longtime colleague of London's, invited her to join his Swing 46 band in 2021 and worked with largely the same core personnel through the club's closing at the end of 2025.
Performing the early set in the heart of Manhattan, often for swing dancers, the musicians developed the trust and fluency that come from returning to the bandstand together each week. Conscious that the engagement would not last forever, London decided about halfway through its run to record the band while it was still performing together each week.
'I was so inspired by the high level of musicianship onstage, I decided we should document this wonderful collaboration,' London explains. 'I approached Mike with the idea to record, and he presented me with a stack of Benny Carter tunes. Mike was friends with Benny, who handed him a pile of songs and said, 'Play these!'
'Benny and Mike are both renowned multi-instrumentalists, but known most for their alto playing,' she continues. 'So I chose seven Benny Carter tunes, and added four more written by alto players — Cole, Hodges, Jordan and Dorsey — thus the title, Alto Madness.'
London wrote three new vocalese passages for the project — on 'New York Afternoon,' 'How Can You Lose?' and 'You Blew Out the Flame in My Heart' — adding to the more than a dozen vocalese pieces she has written and recorded over the course of her career. Vocalese is the practice of fitting words to an instrumental improvisation; but rather than drawing on famous solos from earlier recordings, London wrote these new lyrics to fresh performances by members of this band.
'These were brand-new solos that nobody had heard before,' she says. 'I could have gone looking for an old Coleman Hawkins or Lester Young solo, but these guys are great soloists, and I thought, Let me write lyrics to their solos.'
The album opens with Richie Cole's 'New York Afternoon,' with lyrics by Eddie Jefferson. London arranged the piece and penned additional lyrics and a new vocalese. The track is the album's sole appearance by The Royal Bopsters, who provide four-part background vocals; Horton wrote the horn arrangement, and Pramuk created the vocal harmonies.
'It celebrates our love for New York,' London says. 'The musicians on this record played together for five years in the heart of the city, so it is a very New York record. To my knowledge, the song has not been recorded in 30 or 40 years, and our version is quite different from other covers.'
Horton then frames Benny Carter's 'Key Largo,' with lyrics by Karl Suessdorf and Leah Worth, around Hashim's alto and his own flugelhorn. 'How Can You Lose?' follows, a previously instrumental Benny Carter composition for which London wrote the complete lyric, centering it on voting rights, as well as vocalese set to Horton's trumpet and Hashim's alto solos.
Horton gives Carter's 'Summer Serenade,' with music and lyrics by Carter, a light bossa nova pulse, while Louis Jordan and Jessie Mae Robinson's 'Blue Light Boogie' shifts into a funky, lighthearted shuffle. ''Blue Light Boogie' is a shuffle — you get up and dance,' London says. 'Louis Jordan was an alto player, singer, comedian and entertainer. He wore a lot of hats.'
London then arranges Jimmy Dorsey and Paul Madeira's 'I'm Glad There Is You' as a spacious ballad featuring Hashim on tenor saxophone. 'It's simply one of the most beautiful ballads, and I had never recorded it,' she says.
Hashim arranged 'When Lights Are Low,' with music by Carter and lyrics by Spencer Williams, the Carter composition he had recorded before first meeting its composer. 'Mike recorded the tune on his first album and gave that recording to Benny when they met,' London says, 'so the song has a lot of meaning for him.'
London recasts Carter and Sammy Cahn's 'Only Trust Your Heart,' often heard as a ballad or bossa nova, as a jazz waltz. Johnny Hodges' 'You Blew Out the Flame in My Heart,' with lyrics by Ervin Drake and Jimmy Shirl, follows; London adds a new vocalese, extending the song's fire imagery into words for the band's solos.
The closing pair returns to Carter. Horton brings Hashim's alto together with his own flugelhorn on 'A Kiss from You,' with music by Carter and words by Johnny Mercer, before Carter and Paul Vandervoort II's 'Rock Me to Sleep' ends the album as a lively shuffle rather than a conventional lullaby.
Moving from Cole through seven Carter compositions and songs by Jordan, Dorsey and Hodges, the sequence keeps Carter at the center while completing the broader alto-saxophone concept behind Alto Madness. Recorded in June 2024 and May 2026 at Teaneck Sound, Alto Madness features seven arrangements by Horton, two by Hashim and two by London. Dave Kowalski engineered, mixed and mastered the sessions, and Janis Wilkins created the album design.
'What the record really celebrates is the collaborative process that develops in a regular performance situation with a steady band,' London says. 'Everybody respects everybody, everybody is an equal player on the bandstand, and everybody shares everything. People brought in tunes, sight-read arrangements and tried different things. It was like a laboratory, and the crowds loved us. When the music inspires people to get up and dance, you know you are doing something right.'
Tracklist
New York Afternoon
Key Largo
How Can You Lose?
Summer Serenade
Blue Light Boogie
I'm Glad There Is You
When Lights Are Low
Only Trust Your Heart
You Blew Out the Flame in My Heart
A Kiss from You
Rock Me to Sleep
About Amy London
Amy London is a New York-based jazz vocalist, lyricist, arranger and educator whose career spans solo recording, Broadway and vocal-group performance. After moving to New York in 1980, she spent much of the decade with the female vocal trio the Jazz Babies and later appeared in the original Broadway production of Cy Coleman and David Zippel's City of Angels as a member of its featured jazz vocal quartet. The production won six Tony Awards, and its cast album received a Grammy nomination. London also appeared in the New York City Center production of Promises, Promises starring Martin Short.
A pianist since childhood, she arrived in New York able to read music, transpose and write charts — practical musicianship that later became central to her teaching. Her solo discography began with Two for the Road and continued with the Motéma albums When I Look in Your Eyes and Let's Fly. Her 2018 FiveCat release Bridges collected previously unreleased recordings made decades earlier, featuring musicians including Fred Hersch, Bob Mintzer, Lonnie Smith and Darmon Meader.
London also leads, produces and sings soprano with The Royal Bopsters, the vocal quartet she co-founded. Its 2015 debut, The Royal Bopsters Project, united London, Holli Ross, Dylan Pramuk and Darmon Meader with Jon Hendricks, Annie Ross, Mark Murphy, Sheila Jordan and Bob Dorough and earned four and a half stars in DownBeat. Its follow-up, Party of Four, received four stars, while the ensemble placed first in the Vocal Group category of JazzTimes' 2020 Expanded Critics' Poll.
London has taught jazz voice in New York since 1984 and joined The New School in 1992, where she helped Dr. Richard Harper build its vocal jazz program. She has also taught at City College of New York, Hofstra University and Jazz House Kids, led workshops and jazz camps internationally and recorded the vocal edition of Jim Snidero's Jazz Conception, singing 21 bebop etudes.
Amy London will celebrate the release of Alto Madness with a show at Birdland on October 11, 2026, with special guests The Royal Bopsters. More information is available at amylondonsings.com.
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