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Welcome to BronSongs |
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New CD release - November 30, 2007
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CDs available online at CDBaby.com or directly from Bron (email Bron for details) |
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Click on title to listen to audio clips
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I open the CD with Joy, a joyful meld of my Roland digital 88-key concert grand piano and my 1911 Baldwin acoustic grand piano. Loosely based on themes from the carol “Joy to the World,” this is a free-form and exuberant expression of the excitement I felt as a kid at Christmas time. Silent Night/Theme from the New World Symphony expresses what I imagine to be the stillness and emptiness of a silent night near Bethlehem, where, beneath a star-studded sky, shepherds watched over their sheep in peace, suddenly confronted by a host of angels that must have scared them half to death. I have always loved the theme from Dvorak’s New World Symphony, and in contrast to the silence of Silent Night, it fittingly depicts the grandeur of the angels. The Christmas Song (Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire) was never a part of my Christmas music repertoire. Growing up in Australia, where Christmas Day sometimes reached scorching summer temperatues of 115 degrees F, it was often too hot to cook. We would feast on cold ham and salad, melting ice cream, and head for the swimming pool or the beach to find some relief from the heat. Nevertheless, after 20 years living in Seattle, Washington, I now appreciate these seasonal songs of warmth and this beautiful melody. Carol of the Bells is my friend Joyce’s favorite Christmas tune. In this free-form piece I weave in and out of the themes of What Child is This, We Three Kings and God Rest Ye, Merry Gentlemen, with the Carols of the Bells theme recurring throughout. When I listen to this through headphones, I can hear the fury of the windstorm in Seattle on October 18, during our recording session. O Holy Night has always been my personal favorite Christmas tune. It moves me beyond words. I feel that I perform it with the passion that it stirs within me. White Christmas is another tune that I never imagined to be humanly possible as an Australian youngster sweltering in the heat of an evening Carols by Candlelight service, sitting there in our shorts and tank tops, threatened by bush fires and deafened by cicadas and the squawking of sulphur-crested cockatoos. However, life in Seattle showed me differently, and we did manage at least one White Christmas a few years back, where the Christmas Eve snowfall actually stuck long enough to take a photo, before melting away on Christmas Day. One of Seattle’s most beautiful Holiday traditions is the parade of Christmas Ships from Lake Washington to Lake Union. Every year our friend Captain Larry Kezner takes us out on his small ferry boat and we drink in the wondrous sight of hundreds of small craft, bedecked in colored lights and decorations, awaiting the arrival of the large Christmas Ships. Featuring live choral music and an enormous PA system, timeless tunes emanate across the waves. In 1989 I composed a choral song entitled Christmas Boats, performed by a choir actually on the Christmas Ship. The carol was also performed at the Leavenworth Treelighting Ceremony and other Seattle holiday events. This CD features an instrumental version of the song, played on my two pianos. As a small child growing up in a very musical family, my parents used to play records on the gramophone, leaving the door to the bedroom wing of our home open so we could drift off to sleep with the music in our ears. Gesu Bambino / O Come All Ye Faithful was one of my favorites. The Nutcracker is magical Holiday tradition, performed in Seattle by the Pacific Northwest Ballet. The Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy brings back more childhood memories, and playing it softly on a piano as big and bright as my 1911 Baldwin was challenging. Our first two takes more closely resembled a dance of the sugar plum elephants, but the softer I played it, the more we could hear the wind outside! Also performed on the two pianos, J.S. Bach’s Prelude in C and Charles Gounod’s Ave Maria is a beautiful melody accompanied by a flowing prelude that I learned on the piano as a youngster. I wish I could be Home for Christmas every year, but of course it isn’t possible, feasible, or affordable to do so. On Christmas Eve in Seattle, my thoughts are with my family gathering together in Sydney, Australia on Christmas Day. I talk to my sisters on the phone as we each make our Christmas pudding, 8,000 miles apart, and discuss our Christmas Dinner menus. Boxing Day (December 26) is a holiday in Australia, where amidst a fleet of well-wishers, the Sydney to Hobart yacht race gets underway. Traditionally my family attends their reunion picnic while we drink wassail and enjoy our Christmas Dinner in Seattle. One of my favorite people on this planet is my dear friend Todd Gray. An amazing drummer, Todd also plays upright bass, guitar, mandolin, vibes and can be very entertaining on the kazoo. On the evening of October 18 he dropped by with his snare drum and added a new dimension to my Little Drummer Boy track. I was fortunate that the wind didn’t obstruct his safe passage to my house by blowing a tree in his path, and the power, once reinstated, remained on during the closing hour of our recording session. Todd has always supported me in my recording projects, my concerts, and in countless performances with numerous gigs. I don’t know how to thank him! My final track is Gabriel Faure’s Sanctus (Holy) from his Requiem. The tune has always haunted me and I originally recorded it for a singer-songwriter Christmas CD project with a poem entitled “Spirits of Loved Ones.” Beneath the music track, voices of my family and friends celebrating life’s events together fade in and out of the music. This I will save for my next Christmas CD featuring my favorite songs and many of my own songs of the season. However, the tune remains high on my list of piano favorites, and closes out this album. This track also features both my pianos. Wherever you are, whatever you believe in, may you love and be loved this Holiday season. Bronwyn Edwards Cryer November 2007 |
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