Sometimes, when it's nearing crunch time of the season, tempers get overheated with shopping, wrapping, presents you forget to buy and cards you forget to mail. Suggestion: if you don't scurry down to Birdland, you'll miss out on A Swinging Birdland Christmas which works better than eggnog in getting the cheer going again.
At 6pm, for 90 minutes, five jazz extraordinaires gather on the Birdland stage to open a week of Christmas swing. That sprite for all seasons, Jim Caruso, wants to recall the old-time television variety specials like, "The Andy Williams Show." That is one influence in this program. Another is the late mega-talent, Kay Thompson and her high-octane swinging arrangements.
An acclaimed MGM vocal arranger, Thompson is gone, but in the Thompson spirit at Birdland, another super talent, jazz violinist Aaron Weinstein, adds imaginative arrangements of his own. Outstanding is the show's closer, a wild and crazy, "Jingle Bells," a mélange of harmonies, scat, and terrific vocalizing. Keep this lad in mind, because besides amazing violin virtuosity and savvy arrangements, Weinstein is also deadpan funny. He introduces his tribute to a fiddle idol, Jack Benny, and it's up to you to decide which is funnier, his patter or his Benny theme song, "Love in Bloom."
Remember the theme song from American Bandstand? Sharon Montgomery and Sally Mayes turn the tune (by Barry Manilow and lyricist Billy Stritch) into a swinging antidote to shopping woes, called, "Discount Boogie."
Notable is Hilary Kole and Billy Stritch's supple, harmonic "Christmas Waltz," Stritch with a counter melody and then Weinstein's violin, and for the topping, a new lyric written by Sharon Douglas to form a tasty take on an old favorite.
Guest star for the evening I caught the show was Christine Ebersole delivering her moving version of, "Snowfall." Staying in the mood, Weinstein followed with "Silent Night," and then Kole rendered a lovely, "A Child Is Born." Guest stars on subsequent evenings include Stephanie J. Block (Dec. 21) and Klea Blackhurst (Dec. 22). Accompaniment is by Paul Gill on bass and Tony Tedesco on drums.
But swing was the thing this night, and these four outstanding artists are at the top of their game. A Swinging Birdland Christmas is destined to be a yearly event. And, Jim, Billy, Hilary, Aaron - don't change a thing.
