arrange • compose • conduct
Posts about Christmas-related topics
As in past years, I devoted an hour of my weekly two-hour rehearsal this week to a guided listening. For an hour, we listen to different interpretations of the same Christmas classic. It enables us to focus on tone, interpretation, creativity, and any number of other factors. Here are 2014 […]
A reader asked me what I most often listen to when I deprofessionalize my Christmas listening. Here are 20 of my most likely go-to Christmas albums. (You can check out a shorter Christmas playlist here.) Solo Singing The Christmas Song (Nat “King” Cole) A Merry Christmas With Bing Crosby and the Andrews […]
Every December I like to take an hour of rehearsal and do a guided listening with my students. An hour is half of our weekly time together, which should give you an idea of how important I consider this activity. Christmas songs are great for guided listening because of their ubiquity – we […]
I love to set aside time for a guided Christmas listening during the last week of school before Christmas Break. A Christmas listening is especially enlightening because the songs are so familiar. You can find a bunch of wildly different versions of one song, and listen back to back. Because the song is known, […]
This was my first vocal jazz Christmas album, purchased from Harmony House when I was a sophomore in high school. Was I lucky, or what? It contains marvelous arranging by masters of the genre, a guest appearance by Tony Bennett, and The Manhattan Transfer singing at the top of their […]
Every December I like to take an hour of rehearsal for a guided listening of a single Christmas song, performed by multiple artists. This approach to guided listening has several advantages: Listening to the same song allows us to focus on other aspects of the recording. Christmas songs are so […]
By my count, Chanticleer has released six Christmas albums and a DVD. Of them, my favorite is probably “Christmas with Chanticleer” featuring Dawn Upshaw. Today, however, I want to talk about their 2007 album “Let it Snow”. Over the years, Chanticleer has dabbled in vocal jazz – most memorably in their commissioned […]
By this time in November, I’m happily shuffling more than 40 Christmas CDs in the family stereo. But this week I take a quick break to listen to some great Americana and celebrate Thanksgiving. For several years I’ve enjoyed the Public Radio special “Thanksgiving With Cantus” and happily, they have […]
How fast can you wear out a CD? We recently pulled out the Christmas CDs in our house, and it gave me the chance for a first real listen to The Real Group’s “The World For Christmas.” It was released in 2012, but I finally was able to buy it […]