Your favorite orchestration/string arrangement...

[bassistkll]

Harry Nilsson's "A Little Touch Of Schmilsson In The Night" is an album of Harry singing songs from the Great American Songbook with orchestral arrangements by Frank Sinatra's arranger Gordon Jenkins. Beautiful stuff. My favorite of these is "Makin' Whoopie", at 11:53.

 

[Ross W. Lovell]

For your consideration:

A Salty Dog - Procol Harum




Somewhere - Tom Waits




Titanic Days - Kirsty MacColl (the coda in particular)

I despise disco, but "Staying Alive", between the strings, the horns, the bass and the groove, for some reason, "Car Wash" as well.

Sorry, I'm serious.

 

[Ross W. Lovell]

Harry Nilsson's "A Little Touch Of Schmilsson In The Night" is an album of Harry singing songs from the Great American Songbook with orchestral arrangements by Frank Sinatra's arranger Gordon Jenkins. Beautiful stuff. My favorite of these is "Makin' Whoopie", at 11:53.

Thank you IMMENSELY !! Never knew this existed!

 

[Eli_Kyiv]

Can't believe this wasn't mentioned!
The Verve - Bitter Sweet Symphony

 

[Lagado]

Can't believe this wasn't mentioned!
The Verve - Bitter Sweet Symphony

They "borrowed" it:

"The opening strings are sampled from the 1965 Andrew Oldham Orchestra recording of the Rolling Stones' song "The Last Time", arranged and written by David Whitaker. The Rolling Stones' song was itself strongly inspired by "This May Be the Last Time" from the Staple Singers.The Verve negotiated rights to use a six-note sample from the recording from the recording's copyright holder Decca Records; however, they did not obtain permission from former Rolling Stones manager Allen Klein, who owned the copyrights to the band's pre-1970 songs, including "The Last Time". Although "Bitter Sweet Symphony" had already been released, Klein refused to grant a licence for the sample. This led to a lawsuit with ABKCO Records, Klein's holding company, which was settled out of court. The Verve relinquished all royalties to Klein, and the songwriting credits were changed to Jagger/Richards, with Ashcroft receiving $1,000 for completely relinquishing rights."

Bitter Sweet Symphony - Wikipedia

 

[Eli_Kyiv]

They "borrowed" it

I know, I know... But anyway.

 

[Lagado]

I know, I know... But anyway.

I was surprised how unkind Klein was, he practically took everything. Bitter sweet indeed, Klein being on the sweet end of it.

 

[Michedelic]

I know, I know... But anyway.

Samples don’t count; as I stated in the begining(and you did read the original post, didn’t you?), I wanted to survey what was creatively brought to the table to enhance the work of those who didn’t normally incorporate such instrumentation.

 

[Bob_Ross]

I just remembered Richard Hewson's orchestral arrangements on Renaissance's Novella album are pretty imaginative and well-crafted for a genre that could too easily fall into cliché:

 

[Lagado]

One I remembered earlier, I've always liked its odd appeal. There have been a few covers of it including Bowie and they always lead with the string lines from the chorus. Leander made a nice job of introducing momentum and tension, quite simple but very effective.

"The recording was produced by Mike Leander who formed a sweeping orchestral arrangement for the song. Leander had previously provided arrangements for such records as "She's Leaving Home" by The Beatles and Marianne Faithfull's "As Tears Go By."

 

[marchone]

 

[Guiseppe]

First two that came to mind:

Paul Buckmaster's string arrangement on The Rolling Stones' "Moonlight Mile" from the Sticky Fingers LP


Andrew Pryce Jackman's orchestral arrangement on Yes' "Onward" from the Tormato LP

I was thinking of Paul Buckmaster's input on several Elton John records from back in the day. Now that I think of it, the Crusaders "Royal Jam" with the Royal Philharmonic is pretty amazing, too.

 

[Eli_Kyiv]

Alannah Myles - Song Instead Of A Kiss

 

[JRA]

i read the thread/posts last fall and this tune came to mind, but i wasn't convinced that it met the OP's criteria. now, several months have passed and i feel that it's appropriate to test the waters.. more than anything: i like the tune because it demonstrates that the cat could really, really sing!

this one:

 

[btmpancake]

I give credit to Berry Gordy in the early 60's for me listening to orchestra background music. Then in the early 70's vocal groups such as the Spinners and Ojays had songwriters such as Thom Bell, Linda Creed,Gamble&Huff, Holland, Dozier, Holland, MFSB, TSOP amongst others such as Isaac Hayes, Curtis Mayfield, Barry White to specifically write 'scores' for orchestras to perform. These are some of the early pioneers that started me listening to funky strings and brass. I know I missed a lot of others that should be mentioned.