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Michael Leonhart Orchestra: Silent Night

By Ludovico Granvassu
December 15, 2023
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Conceptually, I find holiday music puzzling. How can it be that, year after year, it keeps being churned out? Even by jazz musicians, who are usually not driven by commercial considerations? Then why not spring-break albums? Or something more meaningful like World Oceans Day jazz music? Or Martin Luther King day songs?

I presume that holiday music represents the ultimate challenge to the creative-minded artist: "how can I bring excitement, new life, and my own stamp, to a corny and overused 'seasonal standard'"?

All fears that the holidays are the Kryptonite of creativity instantly dissipate when you listen to albums like Carla Bley's Carla's Christmas Carols, or A Dreamers Christmas by John Zorn, Very Last Christmas by Tin Men and the Telephone, the An Ayler Xmas series by Mars Williams, or songs like "It's Christmas Time" by Sun Ra, "Christmas with Satan" by James Chance, "Shubho lhaw qolo" by Ibrahim Maalouf.

The latest addition to the small list of inventive and fabulous-sounding holiday music is "Silent Night" as interpreted by the Michael Leonhart Orchestra, featuring a solo by Brandon Wright on flute. As they say on Instagram reels: "wait until the end!"

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I'm the Editor-in-Chief of All About Jazz Italia, host of Mondo Jazz on Radio Free Brooklyn and was once visited by Frank Zappa's ghost.... he was funny too.

About Michael Leonhart

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