| Both
an emotionally earnest, yet wry look at the holiday season, from
this jazzy Celt emigre, whose new home is more palm trees than Douglas
firs!
A CD that helps the listener feel, no matter how wrong the location, or high the temperature, that they're snuggled round a toasty fire! *** Christmas is a bitter sweet time of the year, both wonderful and overwhelming, a ripe opportunity for stress, loneliness and nostalgia, both happy and sad. My mother died a couple of weeks before Christmas. She like many other depressed people couldn't cope with the added anxiety the holiday brought...many people can't. Like all of us who've lost someone around this time of year, I found Christmas a truly difficult and conflicted time for some years after. I'd always loved the season and found the day itself exciting to the point of hysteria! Now, every Christmas day was a struggle between joy qnd guilt, knowing only too well that the closest person to me was gone forever, due in part to the very day I loved so much! There came a time, a few years after coming to the USA, when I decided that a Xmas 'sing along' party was in order, with a giant dressed tree, garlands throughout the house, copious amounts of food, drink and music, wrapped up with caroling till the wee hours! I think I'd had enough of the guilt and self-punishment and with every year and every party I came closer to recovery and to remembering what Christmas truly meant to me, my mother, father and sister, in the days before our lives unravelled. I realised these corny, irreverent, yet strangely heartwarming events were my way of celebrating my mother's life and remembering that she was greatly responsible for my child like love of all things Christmas! Singing our lungs out around the piano, carol books in hand, reminded me of how my family and I would ALWAYS sings carols in the evening, singing 4 part harmony, loving this most simple yet cathartic human experience. And of course the irreverent songs, mostly from my husband and his friends, reminded me too of my families love of comedy and the very serious need of laughter and it's relief in our house.(My sister still manages, every year to give me a 'laugh out loud' present, for example, a rubber duckie, so large, it only just fit in the bath!) Yet here I was on the edge of CA, recreating Christmas, as I knew it, with the sun blazing and palm trees bowing! It felt like Christmas in July and yet was a perfect metaphor of what I was doing mentally and emotionally....turning something that felt so wrong into something very right, embracing both the dark and light events of my life. When Mark and Brian asked me to perform at the Christmas Wilton show, (with Harry guesting) I knew that a jazz version of 'Christmas with the Devil' was the perfect holiday antidote and because the response to it was so amazing, decided that a holiday cd, both wry and warm, was an important step for me. A mix of traditional and original songs, the cd conjures up the best parts of Christmas to me, and should be viewed as part mood enhancer, part emergency kit! Silent Night was always the best song to harmonize, with my family and is still so at our infamous party, so it seemed perfect that my dear friend Julia Fordham should duet with me, both sitting at the piano, making each other blub! 'The Dancing Tree' was written for my mother, who taught me, as a little girl, to dress the tree, a ritual that to this day fills me with delight; reminding me of happier times. I'll always remember the on/off lights that adorned the tree and how I, with my over-active imagination, thought the bejewelled, twinkling fake fir was dancing like a Disney cartoon! 'My Father's Voice' is the 'bookend to 'Dancing Tree'. An ode to my opera-singer father, his love of music, & his passionate voice...such an influence on my life; the one consistent thing in my young life and to the joy he continues to bring me and my friends every Christmas, when he sings old folk songs and hymns. Of course 'God Rest Ye' & 'The Christmas Song' are unabashed holiday gems, with a fresh twist...both party favorites of mine and gorgeous for individual or group singing. I'm sure that now you've read this tome, you'll understand why I couldn't include it in the liner notes. (Too personal and too bloody long!) I hope you have a good Christmas. YES, it'll be stressful, your family will drive you crazy, the presents might be awful, BUT, with drink and food in you, you might be tempted to sing carols, in the dark, around the tree, with friends & family you really do love, (or simply married into!) and that might become one of the happiest memories you carry with you through life...simple I know, but they're usually the best and most resilient ones. Judith x *** Credits: 1.
Christmas with the Devil - Written by Christopher Guest (Coney
Island Whitefish Music), Michael McKean (Plutarch's Tunes), and
Harry Shearer (Dog On The Beach Music) All Tracks Mixed & Mastered by John Fischbach Photography: Patti Williams |
