Listen to this week’s playlist on YouTube and Spotify.
The Big Band Holidays concerts have been a New York City holiday tradition among jazz lovers and families for more than two decades. Every December, the critically acclaimed Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis and an all-star roster of guest vocalists explore the canon of holiday standards and perform both new and traditional arrangements of Yuletide favorites. “Big Band Holidays II” features some of today’s commanding new voices in jazz including Catherine Russell and Veronica Swift.
Fresh of the success of “Eight Track III,” guitarist Dave Stryker and his Eight Track Band with Stefon Harris, Jared Gold and McClenty Hunter decided to make a Christmas album. “It’s crazy to be arranging and recording Christmas music in the middle of summer,” Stryker says,” but I think I was able to put my stamp on this batch of holiday favorites and make a pretty hip record…” The band puts a new jazz spin on Christmas classics like “What Child is This,” “God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen,” “Sleigh Ride” and “Christmas Time is Here” along with Stryker’s mash-up of Young-Holt Unlimited’s classic “Soulful Strut” and “Frosty the Snowman.”
Also this week, sax great Richie Cole presents his tribute to the most wondrous of holidays with “Have Yourself an Alto Madness Christmas”;
the Bill Cunliffe Trio is joined by saxophonist Ralph Moore on “Christmas in the Dog House”;
and the vocal group Accent works with Gordon Goodwin’s Big Phat Band, Arturo Sandoval and others for “Christmas All the Way.”