I imagine, much like me, many of you have a peculiar relationship with Christmas (and winter holidays, in general). Yes, this time of the year can appear to be one marketing blitz blowing past another. Yes, religion can rear its inexplicable head and be injected into places one might not want to experience it. Yes, in the age of COVID, perhaps there are better things to worry about than “history” that occurred ages upon ages ago and what one can accrue from others.
However, for all the many negative things one can conjure during the holidays, things that one can arise to give one pause – this time of the year, one might (in a way) be just like me: grow anxious to spend more precious time with the people who do in fact brighten up your world. You know, we’re all here, where every little rinky-dinky ornament placed on a tiny tree (for a brief moment), reminds us of (or harkens back) to memories that may be more bittersweet or tender. How many of us, on occasion, leave on the holiday station or pick that holiday playlist?
Before heading off to a holiday party, turning on the holiday lights for kids, preparing a meal for a gathering, who hasn’t experienced those brief moments when whatever music they had playing in the background just made them pause and experience a certain something in their hearts that’s indescribable? It could be when they hear Vince Guaraldi’s “Christmastime Is Here”, perhaps “2000 Miles” by The Pretenders, or that golden standard by Frank Sinatra, “Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas”. There are certain songs and certain music that just transcend this little niche of sentimentality each year.
It’s that why, that makes me always try to share a little bit of music around this time of the year that you can definitively share with others. Although not all of us might be as knowledgeable about music, I have a feeling, deep down, that good music can be universally appreciated, that there is such music that is “universal”. It’s what brings us to my need to pass along Steve Erquiaga’s, Wayne Brasel’s, and Kenneth Nash’s A Time For Joy – Reflections In Guitar.
Divided between Christmas classics and a few originals, A Time For Joy – Reflections In Guitar, takes a fresh look at just how one can cover well-worn holiday territory. Gone are the overblown arrangements of contemporary Christian music. What we hear are three instrumentalists favoring something far more quiet, intimate, and minimal. Found on the same Christian New Age label, Colours, that released Phil Keaggy’s like minded ambient music, A Time For Joy – Reflections In Guitar, followed alongside Ivory Sessions’s A Time For Peace and their compilation The Gift – A Colours Christmas as a Christian’s devotional “answer” to Windham Hill’s successful, more ecumenical A Winter’s Solstice released that same year, in 1985.
So, if we put on our critical hat and view this album as the work of musicians who wanted to reimagine devotional compositions, one can’t help but feel that’s where the music holds something truly special. For long time readers of this blog, we already know how interesting Kenneth Nash‘s voicing is. Working with two gifted jazz guitarists like Steve Erquiaga and Wayne Brasel, songs like J.S. Bach’s “Jesu, Joy Of Man’s Desiring” get arrangements from Mr. Nash that transforms them into sublime madrigals “truer” to the hymnal quality of the original composition.
Witness Wayne doing that solely on his reimagining of Beethoven’s “Ode To Joy”, transforming that one into some kind of “American Primitive”-lite beauty. How can one not tip one’s hat to an album that features immediately after an embryonic version of Kenneth Nash’s “Seascape”? Adorned with a ringing quality and a slower pace, here Steve Erquiaga’s guitar lends it a sonic meditation that does sound communal.
The simple strokes that the trio favor to cover the breadth of Christian holiday music lend A Time For Joy – Reflections In Guitar its intimate closeness. “Almost Home”, another Kenneth Nash original, captures the easy-going mood of winter vacation days (for those who can muster them now). Perhaps for those who grew up having to sing the Charles Wesley hymnal “Rejoice! The Lord Is King”, you’ll find something quite inspirational in the transformative bridge played on this version. Now transplant that same feeling to the trio’s take on Handel’s “Joy To The World”.
More contemporary hymns like Evelyn Tarner’s “Rejoice In The Lord Always” have a certain vibe that transcends their stuffy, conservative, cornerstone. Another original, “A Morning Song”, gives off the airs of rumination and pensiveness that belong to special holiday songs who have similar gravity, when played in life’s special hours. And in this case, such a song has this almost eastern, Byzantine quality to it (perhaps due to its quasi-Mediterranean qualities) that places it in warmer environs. Then another touchstone of evangelical gospel hymnals, Alliene Vale’s “The Joy Of The Lord”, gets a surprisingly meditative reimagining that uses its double-tracked guitars as wonderful counterpoints, each coming in and out of harmony before dissolving into some unplaceable ambient jazz.
The album ends not on any distinctly religious track but on one of Francisco Tárrega’s languid instructional devotionals – not to any untouchable higher power – but to one speaking of our power to affect one another. It’s a very simple, unpretentious song learned by countless who ever picked up a guitar but here it’s, yet again, another miniature touching on things that are best handled with a soft touch and a simple spirit. When you’re hanging out in some wee hour enjoying your holidays, I’d like to think here’s a set of music that you can actually find a few more surprising fans for. And who knows? Have conversations about (and memories with) that can be more than just seasonal.