Home » Jazz Articles » Album Review » Steven Schoenberg: Christmas Reimagined

15

Steven Schoenberg: Christmas Reimagined

By

View read count
Steven Schoenberg: Christmas Reimagined
Categorization is an anti-entropic effort to describe similar, but not equal, things for comparative reasons. So was my thinking when I began my review of pianist Steven Schoenberg's recording Steven Schoenberg Live: An Improvisational Journey (Quabbin Records, 2009) with:

"Like the face of Helen launching a thousand ships, for better or worse, Keith Jarrett's 1975 Koln Concert (ECM) inspired a like number of improvisational piano recitals (half of which were ultimately Jarrett's own) and the entire genre of "New Age" solo piano music. This spontaneous creativity is, at best an inspiration, and at worst, a bore."

This was my mostly failing attempt to provide potential listeners with an idea of what they were in for when they happened to spin Schoenberg's disc beneath the magic laser. I never intended "new age" as a pejorative, only a descriptor to provide context. New age and ambient music have their place and I have enjoyed many recordings classified as such.

But the trend, particularly in jazz and other improvised music, has been for finer and finer "genre" granularity, music that defies ready categorization. That said, I will refrain from such in describing Schoenberg's current recording Christmas Reimagined so inelegantly. Schoenberg takes on a repertoire so intolerant of poor presentation that lesser talents have clotted cut-out bins with their bathetic and often wholly contrived recordings. Not so with this recording.

What Schoenberg has accomplishes with Christmas Reimagined is a finely crafted history of piano performance using a sturdy, if unforgiving, body of songs as his vehicle. For instance, the opening "We Wish You a Merry Christmas" is played with a Liszt left hand transcribing Schubert and a solid Bill Evans right, playing rhythmically crossways. "Carol of the Bells" is impressionistic and dynamically kinetic, with Schoenberg practicing a dramatic volume modulation. Here, Schoenberg approaches George Winston's sublime December (Windom Hill, 1990).

Schoenberg hits his stride with an all-American "Here We Come A-wassailing," where he begins tentatively, stirring in broad major chords full of the blues and church. His virtuosity swirls in this brief 1:39 song, a study in perfect arrangement and programming. "The Christmas Song" is busy with Schoenberg building cheer musically and dynamically, in an Oscar Peterson sort of way, were Peterson reined in by Gene Harris's good taste. "The First Noel" is delivered with the clarity preceding a dream while "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen" is sonically orchestral and closely intimate at the same time.

Schoenberg is an accomplished improvisatory pianist who is able to sit down and summon a lifetime of experience making it come to attention and order three minutes at a time. Christmas Reimagined is a collection of refined miniatures played with grace and humor.

Track Listing

We Wish You a Merry Christmas; Carol of the Bells; Here We Come a- Wassailing; Little Drummer Boy/Joy to the World; The Christmas Song; We Three Kings; God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen; Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas; My Favorite Things; Do You Hear What I Hear?; Auld Lang Syne; Angels We Have Heard On High; Silent Night; I'll Be Home For Christmas.

Personnel

Steven Schoenberg: piano.

Album information

Title: Christmas Reimagined | Year Released: 2014 | Record Label: Sonic Veil

Tags

Comments


PREVIOUS / NEXT




Support All About Jazz

Get the Jazz Near You newsletter All About Jazz has been a pillar of jazz since 1995, championing it as an art form and, more importantly, supporting the musicians who make it. Our enduring commitment has made "AAJ" one of the most culturally important websites of its kind, read by hundreds of thousands of fans, musicians and industry figures every month.

Go Ad Free!

To maintain our platform while developing new means to foster jazz discovery and connectivity, we need your help. You can become a sustaining member for as little as $20 and in return, we'll immediately hide those pesky ads plus provide access to future articles for a full year. This winning combination vastly improves your AAJ experience and allow us to vigorously build on the pioneering work we first started in 1995. So enjoy an ad-free AAJ experience and help us remain a positive beacon for jazz by making a donation today.

More

Tramonto
John Taylor
Ki
Natsuki Tamura / Satoko Fujii
Duality Pt: 02
Dom Franks' Strayhorn
The Sound of Raspberry
Tatsuya Yoshida / Martín Escalante

Popular

Old Home/New Home
The Brian Martin Big Band
My Ideal
Sam Dillon
Ecliptic
Shifa شفاء - Rachel Musson, Pat Thomas, Mark Sanders
Lado B Brazilian Project 2
Catina DeLuna & Otmaro Ruíz

Get more of a good thing!

Our weekly newsletter highlights our top stories, our special offers, and upcoming jazz events near you.

Install All About Jazz

iOS Instructions:

To install this app, follow these steps:

All About Jazz would like to send you notifications

Notifications include timely alerts to content of interest, such as articles, reviews, new features, and more. These can be configured in Settings.