A Perfect Time For American Song

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The New York Sun

Christmas songs have a very personal continuity that other music doesn’t have. There may be people on the planet who have never heard “Over the Rainbow” or “All the Things You Are,” but even people who have never seen snow know the words to “White Christmas.” The holidays are the perfect time to celebrate the Great American Songbook, and the direct link with tradition it represents. And if there’s anyone to do it, it’s Michael Feinstein.


Mr. Feinstein’s Christmas program is less like a concert or a club set than a warm, close-knit party with friends and all of those relatives whom you actually do want to spend time with. His own singing almost always communicates his great love for the songs and the people who wrote them, but when he sings Christmas material, he expresses his overwhelming feeling for the words as well.


Like the great Tony Bennett, Mr. Feinstein is capable of expressing the melancholic underside of a wartime classic like “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas.” At the same time, however, he never stoops to sarcasm – he can sing a line like “slice up the fruitcake” from “We Need a Little Christmas” without a whiff of irony. Mr. Feinstein also realizes it wouldn’t be much of a party without humor, which arrives in the form of his annual quest for a Chanukah song to rival the great Christmas music, leading him this year to Tom Lehrer’s “Chanukah In Santa Monica.”


Mr. Feinstein’s other goal is to find the perfect “Christmas in New York” song, but there are actually very few songs specifically on that subtopic. He introduces a new one this year, “Lady Manhattan” by comic and impressionist Fred Travelena. But, more often, he makes the show reflect the dual theme by alternating between Christmas songs and New York songs (like “Lullaby of Broadway”), thus creating a montage out of the two.


Mr. Feinstein, who was all but adopted by the late Rosemary Clooney, has in turn himself adopted the all-star band Clooney employed in her New York appearances: Bucky Pizzarelli (guitar), Mark Vinci (saxophones), Jay Leonhart (bass), and Joe Cucuzzo (drums). Though his part-time pianist and musical director was John Oddo, Ms. Clooney’s marvelous accompanist for many years, Mr.Feinstein always sounds best when he’s playing for himself.


Up to now, there have been three major male vocalists whose voices have always meant Christmas to me: Bing Crosby, Nat King Cole, and Perry Como. Mr. Feinstein shows every sign of joining their ranks. He is undoubtedly the greatest living performer of what he calls “Holiday Heart Songs.”


***


If there’s one artist whom I would rather spend Christmas with than Michael Feinstein, it would be the late Nat King Cole. Since that isn’t likely to happen, however, the next best thing would be “A Nat King Cole Christmas,” which has been presented for several seasons now by the two-piano team of Monty Alexander and Freddy Cole.


Freddy Cole evokes his late older brother while at the same time remaining resolutely his own man. Nobody living can sing “The Christmas Song” (“Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire”) like the younger Cole, who has even written his own charming Christmas children’s song. To me, Christmas isn’t Christmas without Mr. Cole singing his “Jingles, The Christmas Cat.”


Part of Nat King Cole’s legacy is that the Christmas season has become heavily associated with pianists in recent years – including Mr. Feinstein, Mr. Alexander, Freddy Cole, and Cyrus Chestnut. Mr. Chestnut is a highly entertaining younger keyboardist, whose playing encompasses both swing and bop and whose outgoing personality makes him the perfect choice to host a Christmas party at Dizzy’s Club Coca Cola.


“Holiday Jazz With Cyrus Chestnut,” teams Mr. Chestnut – whose very name suggests a Christmas song – with Donald Harrison, an outstanding New Orleans-based alto saxophonist whose recent appearance at the Iridium in tribute to his late employer, Art Blakey, was one of the great shows of the previous season.


***


One non-playing singer making a significant contribution to the Yuletide celebration this year is Dianne Reeves. On her new album, “Christmas Time Is Here” (Blue Note 73444), she brings her amazing sound and prodigious gift for melodic embellishment to a very pleasing mixture of holiday-oriented material. There are folk songs, (“Christ Child’s Lullaby”), songs from jazz composers (Thad Jones’s “A Child Is Born,” Vince Guaraldi’s “Christmas Time Is Here”), and one from the world of R & B (Brook Benton’s “This Time of the Year”), in addition to such familiar pop fare as “Let It Snow,” “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas,” and “I’ll Be Home for Christmas.”


Her treatments of these familiar carols, both old and older, are marvelously fresh and original, rendered in a way that accentuates both the rhythmic and spiritual essences of the material. The album opens with “Little Drummer Boy,” on which she emphasizes a backbeat that is at once African, funky, and mellow. She plays with common and cut time – for instance, taking songs written in 3/4, like “The Christmas Waltz” and reconfiguring them into odd-meter funk of the most joyous sort.


“Christmas Time Is Here” is an album that works on both a musical and spiritual level, and – I have no doubt – a commercial one as well. It’s hard to imagine anybody who wouldn’t love it.



Michael Feinstein until December 31 (540 Park Avenue, 212-339-4095).


“A Nat King Cole Christmas” until December 26 (131 W. 3rd Street, between MacDougal Street &; Sixth Avenue, 212-475-8592).


“Holiday Jazz” (Broadway at 60th Street, 212-721-6500).


The New York Sun

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