Where technology meets art

Bill Carrothers, Christmas Music, September 2018 – Chicago, Illinois

There are many Christmas performances in the annals of jazz, but inexplicably very few of them are musically satisfying. Why this is remains a mystery -- perhaps it is because they only touch a musical surface while gliding along on the well-known melodies of Christmas.  Thankfully, that is not the case in these performances. Mr. Carrothers has understood and embraced the beauty of classic Christmas melodies (White Christmas, I’ll Be Home For Christmas, Holy Night, etc.) while imbuing them with a modern jazz feeling, replete with deep, rich, harmonies. This is gorgeous music and it is rewarding music, a real tribute and celebration of all that Christmas and its attendant spirit stand for. Further embodying the result, and appropriately, the recording took place in a large church with Mr. Carrothers playing a 7-foot Steinway piano.  Captured with just two Sanken C-100k omni-direction microphones onto a custom Studer/Revox C-272, two-track, tape recorder using two Pueblo microphone preamps, the music is conveyed to the listener as it was that evening in the Chicago church: a celestial experience.