Holiday Songbook I (12/14/19)

Here’s the subtitle (and take a big breath): A Concert of Traditional and New Holiday Music Presented by Students and Alumni of Marymount Manhattan College

Whew! There were twenty pieces performed, so don’t expect a blow-by-blow and a shout-out to every performer. The setup gave this the feel of a (really good) school talent show—not that there’s anything wrong with that.

Some of the traditional works included a medley of I’ll Be Home for Christmas/Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas/The Christmas Song, which was a very pleasant start to the afternoon. Parts of the medley included nice harmonies and backup singing, with the main tunes shared pretty equally among the four singers, one of whom was the pianist who created the arrangement. Also traditional, but not really, was Man with the Bag, performed by Cissy Walken, Miss Stonewall Inn 50. Anybody who costumes/make-ups herself that much for one song deserves a shout-out. She sang (not lip-sync’ed) to a karaoke-style arrangement that was presentable but not in the ‘wow’ category.

Rounding out the traditional was Joni Mitchell’s River, which never quite does it for me as a holiday song but which was nevertheless enjoyable as a duo guitar/vocal performance; Jingle Bells (with a hip-hop dance break—I’m not making this up, you know); Oh Holy Night in an interesting arrangement for a female trio; and a highly stylized version of Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas, which book-ended the concert quite nicely.

Oops, I forgot Merry Christmas Darling (styled nicely) and the John Lennon/Yoko Ono War Is Over, performed with piano and guitar, and backup singers providing nice harmonies for the vocal soloist.

Two of the songs written specifically for this event caught my attention. Snow, which was a premiere, had interesting harmonies. And Christmas on the Beach was jazzy and also included nice harmonies. I like my harmony—it just adds more to the piece, in my opinion. And for the record, I’m referring to vocal harmonies.

A few that looked good on paper just didn’t quite make it for me. They included Winter Snow, which had a nice pop feel to it but was just OK, Never Fall in Love with an Elf, and Christmas Sweater, which had a good idea but could have been realized a little better. Once again, these are my opinions only, and I certainly give all these youngsters props for composing new material to be heard on this holiday concert.

A few others were not composed for this concert. They included Mistletoe, by Justin Bieber, and Believe (from Polar Express). The best of the bunch for me was Traigo La Alegria, written by Manny Delgado—a Venezuelan composer. He is the grandfather of the young man who performed this piece, accompanying himself on the ukulele. As he explained from the stage, the ukulele is the closest thing to a similar Venezuelan instrument that is slightly larger and tuned slightly differently. But he had the uke, so there you go. But the story gets better. His grandfather talked him through learning the piece for this concert. The piece was nice—the story was excellent.

Once again, Holiday Songbook was a lot of fun. The audience had a great time, as did I.

ConcertMeister