Inara George & Van Dyke Parks

Inara George is a Los Angeles–based singer and songwriter whose voiceand musicality move easily between pop, folk, and jazz. Best known asone half of The Bird and the Bee with Grammy-winning producer Greg Kurstin, and as a member of The Living Sisters, she has built a rich andvaried career that spans acclaimed solo work, collaborations with VanDyke Parks and Michael Andrews, and performances at venues ranging from the Hollywood Bowl and Carnegie Hall to beloved Los Angeles clubs like Largo and the Troubadour. Her latest release, Songs of Douglass and Littell, revisits music written years ago by her friends and longtime collaborators Philip Littell and Eliot Douglass. The album offers a fresh interpretation of their work—one that veers into new territory for George as she dives more deeply into jazz-inspired phrasing, harmony, and mood than ever before. Yet these interpretations fit seamlessly within the arc of her broader catalog, reflecting the same warmth, wit, and melodic imagination that define her earlier work. In performance, the music from Songs of Douglass and Littell feel like a natural extension of the voice and sensibility that have long been at the heart of her sound.

Van Dyke Parks has left an indelible mark on music as one of the preeminent arrangers and pop artists in the world since first performing as a child in the 1950s. Parks is an instrumentalist, performer, singer, songwriter, lyricist, and producer. But above all, he considers himself an arranger. Parks was born in Hattiesburg, Mississippi in 1943. In 1952, he left home, to attend the American Boy Choir School in Princeton, New Jersey. There, he met Albert Einstein, who accompanied him on violin with Noëls one Christmas. By age 10, Parks had performed in all of the contiguous 48 states, traveling by bus across America. He first appeared on stage at Carnegie Hall in 1955, with famed conductor Arturo Toscanini.