If you need to get away from the candles and clove of Windham Hill, there’s always Godfrey Winham.
When Winham takes on a Christmas classic, it’s like a great, big, satisfying ice ball in the face of George Winston. He’s as bracing as a ride in a one-horse open sleigh.
Winham is probably best-known for his role right here in Princeton as an electronic music pioneer. As might be expected, this didn’t lead to a lot of toe-tappers. One day, after listening to some of Windham’s music, his son asked him if he could write something a bit simpler. This was the impetus for a 26-minute set of keyboard meditations on a familiar Christmas tune, titled “Variations on a Theme by James Pierpont” – otherwise known as “The Jingle Bells Variations.”
This is music a grown-up Schroeder would be proud to own. You can listen to it here, starting about 26 minutes into the program
https://www.wwfm.org/webcasts/2018-12-25/a-between-the-keys-christmas-special
If you are at all interested in Princeton and the history of computer music, and you haven’t checked out this podcast yet, you owe it to yourself to do so:
Winham features most prominently – and poignantly – in Episode 3:
I wrote about the podcast and its producer, Aaron Nathans, back in September for an article in U.S. 1.
This is my favorite version of “Jingle Bells” – presented by the Robert DeCormier Singers as it was originally published in 1857.
BONUS! Leopold Mozart’s “A Musical Sleigh Ride,” complete with neighing horses, excitable hounds, and whip cracks. As a radio host, I made it a point to share this fun recording with the Eduard Melkus Ensemble every year on my last shift before Christmas. At home, it drove the dogs crazy.
With extreme winter weather expected to disrupt travel and last-minute Christmas shopping across much of the country, there’s plenty of music about winter recreation to fuel your imagination as you cozy-in around the hearth.