 | I come from a part of the world where Christmas means sunshine & summer holidays so it's hard not to have a sense of irony about the yuletide season when you see signwriters painting snowy graphics on shop windows while wearing shorts, Serengetis & SPF 30+. Indeed, an ambulance always follows Santa's float in the Christmas parade just in case the jolly red guy keels over from heat exhaustion.
Ok, I'm kidding about the ambulance but I have seen Santa rip off his beard and knock back a cooling beer much to the mortification of impressionable young children & their soon-to-be-explaining-the-truth-about-Santa parents.
Despite the incongruity my favourite Christmas album is George Winston's seminal disc, December. The piano has an incredible emotional range, seemingly strident and intimate all at once, & Winston uses these qualities & his formidable skill as a soloist to evince a design that threatens to reduce us under an absolute despotism of beauty.*
Featuring traditional & contemporary tunes, December will have even the most jaded Christmas refugee staring out the window and longing for a long, gentle snowfall. And such is the power of our culture that even sunburned antipodeans like me can still feel some vestgial longing for big roast birds & a burning fire instead of barbecues & shady trees.
Winston's rendition of Pachelbel's Canon in D has long been my favourite as it builds, supremely powerful & lovely. Minstrels & Jesus, Jesus, Rest Your Head as well as Winston's own Thanksgiving are almost as sublime.
George Winston comes from and still lives in Montana, a state where winter's holiday of goodwill must be especially lovely; crisp, quiet & restful. December evokes & colours that sparse landscape with intimacy & loveliness. It's testament to the power of evocative music that it can transport you from a world of sizzling Santas to one of cool serenity.
Ross
Note: originally released in 1982, December has been remastered & re-released with two extra tracks. Play it all year and not just at the time of yule.
*oh, TJ, you have a lot to answer for :-) |
