Christmas Music
I was hesitating a moment to call whether I should call this thread “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas”, as I’ve no idea what religion my dear readers are following (if at all).
I then decided against it, for several reasons. A) I’m personally not religious at all, but grew up in Europe where Christmas is the most important holiday and B) I hope that if you’re following any other religion and don’t particularly care for Christmas, you either just skip this post or, even better, still check out the album below, as it is actually really nice.
If you want more Christmas music, be it Jazz or Classical music, I suggest you also check out my Top 5 Christmas Jazz post, my Favorite Seasonal Music, my recommendations for the Messiah, and obviously, the Christmas Oratorio.
A Joey Alexander Christmas (Motema 2018)
This “EP” (a concept really a bit outdated in the world of streaming and downloads) of only 4 tracks features some outstanding musicians.
I haven’t mentioned Joey Alexander yet. A big mistake. It’s actually an amazing story. He comes from the Jazz hotspot of Bali (sorry, cheap pun), and played at the Lincoln centre at the age of 10, and started recording music at the age of 11!!!! Now he still is at the tender age of 15, and if you wouldn’t see it in the video below, you’d have now way of knowing.
He’s playing here both solo and trio. On the trio tracks we get Larry Grenadier of Brad Mehldau fame, on bass, and Eric Harland, who’s played with a lot of Jazz celebrities (MyCoy Tyner, Dave Holland, etc.).
This EP features two seasonally inspired tracks, O Come All Ye Faithful (see the Youtube clip below), and What A Friend We Have In Jesus.
As an add on, we get remastered versions of My Favorite Things, a duo with Larry Grenadier, recorded in 2015 (I’ll let you do the math of Alexander’s age at the time, but its just unbelievable), as well as a solo version of A Wonderful World. Both are just fantastic.
A truly enjoyable album that you shouldn’t limit only to the Christmas season!
My rating: 4 stars