Just five days till Christmas, and you’re still wondering how to fill those blank lines on your gift list? Can’t really decide between the macrame sweater and the reindeer gloves for Uncle Kendrick? The zirconium-encrusted lipstick container, for your wife’s cousin: just doesn’t seem to sparkle the way it did when you bought it, right? And seriously – how many red-and-green striped-and-starred socks does any brother-in-law really need?
Not to worry, children. The music-industry elves have once again been busy producing new Christmas jazz CDs. And your Chicago Jazz Examiner has put his Hannukah plans on hold in order to let you know about them: discs from around the country today, and tomorrow, Xmas greetings from Chicago artists. That should give you just enough time to download, digitally wrap, and place right next to your loved ones’ iPods before the big day. (There’s even a free gift at the end of this column. Who you callin’ Grinch?)
Speaking of Santa’s helpers, Harry Connick, Jr. has concocted a storybook album called Music from The Happy Elf. Connick – who loses a little more of his New Orleans patois with every passing year – starts by narrating his own picture-book (published this season by Harper Collins). It tells the legend of an overly exuberant elf named Eubie, who uses his Magic Hat – that’s right, just like the brewery – to reform the town of Bluesville, which is populated by only naughty children.
Yes, well . . . at 60, I’m not exactly the target audience, and I’m guessing really young kids may actually like this treacly tale. They may even enjoy the music that follows: a dozen programmatic tunes designed to illustrate the opening story. Adults, not so much; despite the musicianship of his trio-mates, things bog down in Connick’s colorful but cliched piano and too many generically “jazzy” and “bluesy” compositions.
But piano albums proliferate this season, and a couple others stand out like bright stars on a wintry night. Marcus Roberts covers more than a dozen tunes, from secular snow songs to traditional hymns and carols, on Celebrating Christmas, the first recording under his own name in a decade. Roberts is the hard-swinging blind keyboardist with the feathery touch who came to prominence in Wynton Marsalis’s bands of the 1980s. This set is all solid, and sometimes inspired – especially when Roberts burrows deep into the bayou and recaptures the humid swagger of Marsalis’s wonderful 1989 disc Crescent City Christmas Card, on which Roberts played with the soulful sagacity of all three wise men.
One other piano trio, which you’ve almost certainly never heard of, shines even a little brighter. Tri-Fi is the quirkily named combo better known as the rhythm section behind the popular vocalist Curtis Stigers: drummer Keith Hall, bassist Phil Palombi, and pianist Matthew Fries. On A Tri-Fi Christmas, they cover plenty of the expected material (including five of the tunes on Marcus Roberts’ album, among them “Carol of the Bells” and “We Three Kings”). But Tri-Fi also include a couple genuine surprises – “In The Bleak Midwinter,” a balladic carol by the 20th-century classical composer Gustav Holst; and the obscure “I Heard The Bells On Christmas Day” (based on a poem by Longfellow). More important, this trio snaps and crackles like a fireplace full of well-seasoned Yule logs; their nicely honed interplay makes even these chestnuts sound fresh. Tri-Fi rides along on great arrangements, and pianist Fries’ uncluttered solo lines, to offer a new Christmas classic.
Geri Allen, the greatly gifted pianist, needs no trio to weave a rich tapestry on A Child Is Born, possibly my favorite new Christmas disc. No dancing snowmen or prancing elves here: Allen homes in on the holiday’s solemnity, discreetly backing her solo piano work with a bank of keyboards and a judicious sprinkling of homespun vocals by three little-known guests. You might have guessed her focus from the album title; it comes from the composition by Sir Roland Hanna and Thad Jones, which has become a Christmas staple (despite the fact that the song’s original intent had nothing to do with a baby Messiah).
But Allen plays against type as she distributes these simple gifts, from “Angels We Have Heard On High” to “O Come, O Come Emmanuel.” The first of these swings hard; the latter alternates gorgeous rubato piano with an eerie vocal direct from the delta; a handful of short original tracks bring folk, neo-soul, and a touch of Godspell into the mix. This hodgepodge of styles shouldn’t work. But thanks to Allen’s prodigious technique, and her encyclopedic command of jazz and other idioms, it all comes together like so many disparate ornaments on a well-trimmed tree.
Several vocalists have hung their stockings on the Christmas hearth this year, with predictably mixed results. Nicole Henry stars on a live recording called Set For The Season, recorded two Decembers ago at the Cotton Club in Tokyo. The repertoire is less than inspired – “Rudolph” and “Santa Claus Is Coming To Town” jostle against some of the usual hibernal suspects (“My Favorite Things,” “Baby, It’s Cold Outside”) – but that may have everything to do tailoring the set for the Japanese audience. Henry has a pleasant instrument, and some good ideas of what to do with it, particularly when she taps into of her r-and-b background. She won’t make you forget the dozen other vocalists who could really nail these songs, but you won’t get burned, either.
From Canada comes A Celebration In Time, headed up by two of that country’s jazz treasures. Ranee Lee sings in a big, bosomy voice, with generous vibrato and no little swing; then again, Who couldn’t swing with Oliver Jones at the piano? Jones, who patterned his own style after that of his fellow Montrealer Oscar Peterson, doesn’t record much these days (he’s 77, after all). That makes his full-bodied voicings and the steely spring of his right-hand lines all the more welcome. The album suffers a bit from multiple personality syndrome: in one short stretch, it careens from traditional carols (backed by gospel choir) to a medley of Haitian hymns – featuring Haitian singers and a blowsy Caribbean sax solo – to an overwrought pop arrangement of “Greensleeves.” But at almost every turn, Jones steps up to provide a through-current of gigantical pianism.
Certainly, the oddest vocal disc of the season comes from Austrian-born alto (and impressive linguist) Elisabeth Lohninger. Fronting a band headed up by brothers Axel and Walter Fishbacher (guitar, piano), she fills Christmas In July with a dozen songs from across the globe – and sings them in nine languages, from Italian to Japanese to Portuguese to Swedish. For all that, the song that sounds most foreign is sung in English: an ill-considered version of "The Christmas Song" mashed into the chord sequence from John Coltrane’s “Giant Steps.” Lohninger does an admirable job of shoehorning “Chestnuts roasting” into Coltrane’s shifting tonal centers, but it still sounds like the band can’t find the proper key.
The fact that this song opens the disc could easily turn listeners off from the start; but that would be a shame, because you’d miss the lovely effect of Lohninger’s silky alto, her command of all those languages, a touch of inspired scatting, and a raft of global holiday songs far removed from the usual fare.
And, as promised, here’s an extra holiday gift from me to you: a free-download, short-form collection of Christmas jazz, courtesy of Stella Artois beer. It features a passel of vocalists and some sparkling solos, against grandly retro big-band arrangements, from some pretty high-powered names – among them trumpeter Steve Bernstein, trombonist Art Baron, vibist Mark Sherman, guitarist Doug Wamble, bassist David Wong, and drummer Kenny Wolleson.
Don’t say I never gave you nothin’.
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