All about Eve (Christmas that is)

A Kiwi night before Christmas

I used to love Christmas Eve as a child.  I would put clean sheets on my bed (the pretty ones with tiny orange rose sprigs on them), have a bath and get into clean pyjamas, watch the Christmas movie on television, have a Christmas story and then spend the night tossing and turning because it was too exciting to sleep.  I would give  up at about 5am and sit on the couch staring at the presents under the tree with my brother and sister until our poor parents finally joined us at some still ungodly hour.  One year in a bid to get a bit of a sleep-in on Christmas Day our parents (poor deluded darlings) put all of our presents in pillow cases at the end of our beds but we kept going in to show them the presents we had gotten. 

This year I have my own very enthusiastic not quite four year old and chubby cheeked cherub of just past one to start our own traditions with (I know Lucy has already had a couple of Christmases but I’m only just getting organised enough for the Christmas trimmings – so to speak).  These may not turn in to traditions as such but this Christmas Eve the Christmas stories will be  A Kiwi night before Christmas and the Christmas caravan - not just in a bid to support our local talent but to hammer home the lack of snow at Christmas. 

And the music on the drive down to Hawea?  A mix of Abba, Neil Diamond, John Denver and The absolute best Christmas album in the world - ever (that is the actual title but still quite good even if you don’t like Christmas music). 

So what is on your Chrismas Eve agenda? Have a Merry Christmas and if it doesn’t go to plan, just think how glad you are that you don’t have to listen to our music selection on a five hour car trip.

 

A new resource for music connoisseurs!

Music Online brings together on a single cross-searchable platform the entire suite of Alexander Street Press music products that we now subscribe to. Music Online can potentially cross-search all of these or using the drop down box, any of these individual databases:

• American Song – an eclectic collection of music from America’s past and present. Songs from American Indians, slaves and singing cowboys! Content includes protest songs, folk, blues, Motown, funk and more….   
• Classical Music Library – Tens of thousands of licensed recordings that users can listen to. The audio selections are cross referenced to a database of supplementary reference information. Hear the music and also understand what they are on about!   
• Contemporary World Music – Global sounds? How about some Arab swing or Balkanic jazz. Perhaps the flamenco and a bit of Bollywood to have us dancing in the aisles?  
• Jazz Music Library – An Alexander Street strength. Provides online listening to thousands of jazz artists, albums and genres. Listen to New Orleans Jazz, Big Bands, Acid Jazz and more! Am I the only one who knew nothing about Acid Jazz??
• Smithsonian Global Sound for Libraries – A virtual encyclopaedia of the world’s musical and aural traditions. Includes more than 35,000 individual tracks of music, spoken word and natural and human made sounds!? 

This database complements our music collection such as the  Naxos Music Library.  You can access these database and many others  from home with your library card number and PIN, or at our community libraries through our Premium Sites!  Enjoy and “get down” with this fabulous new resource!

 

New Zealand’s home video

Recently I had the pleasure of helping the Nelson band Minuit with an image order from our library. Their request was a stunning portrait of Ngaio Marsh for their new music video titled “Aotearoa“. The video is filled with New Zealand images  (in their credits they thank “the awesome librarians at our national libraries and archives” for their help). With powerful imagery old and new they have managed to create a patchwork of New Zealand history and modern life. If New Zealand made it’s own home video, I imagine it would look something like this. The band informed me that they had 10,000 views in the first 5 days making it the #1 most viewed music clip in New Zealand that week. So, have a watch and keep supporting New Zealand music.

 

Hallelujah!

Yep it’s Messiah time again. One of the enduring musical traditions of Christmas is the performance of Handel’s Oratorio Messiah, often by an amateur or semi professional community choir. Written in 1741  it became an instant favourite in England, where over the centuries developed into massive performance featuring a hundreds of singers and musicians all blasting away in the local town hall. Then there was a counter movement back to smaller choirs and orchestras in the style that Handel would have known and written for.

In Christchurch this festive season you can experience the Messiah in fairly traditional style.  On Sunday 20 December the choir and orchestra of the Cathedral of the Blessed Sacrament (Catholic Cathedral) will perform the Messiah.

There are traditions surrounding the performance. Audiences stand at the opening bars of the Hallelujah chorus , allegedly because when King George II attended a performance he was so moved by the power of the music that he rose to his feet and of course everyone had to stand as well (other reasons include his gout was giving him gyp and so on) Another traditional sight is people following the music with their own score.  Singalong Messiahs are very common too and I once stumbled into a Messiah performance in Melbourne by a group of pretty non musical amateurs who had undertaken the performance as a self improvement challenge! Handel’s music is so great that it can still rise above nearly every challenge thrown against it but really – have a Christmas treat and listen to some Messiah highlights performed by good choirs and soloists. The  Hallelujah Chorus ceases to be a  cliche when you listen to it as a beautifully performed dramatic piece of music. It is no surprise that Handel was a prolific writer for dramatic performances of both oratorios and operas.  Explore some of the other great music in the oratorio.  My favourites include “The trumpet shall sound”  “I know that my redeemer liveth”  “For unto us a child is born” and a fabulous Amen chorus.

This year was the 25oth anniversary of Handel’s death and the library has a dvd of  a special anniversary performance of Messiah by the orchestra and chorus of the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields, conducted by Neville Marriner and featuring  Sylvia McNair, soprano, Anne Sofie von Otter, mezzo-soprano ; Michael Chance, alto ; Jerry Hadley, tenor ; Robert Lloyd, bass.

 

Celebrate Christmas with some magical stories for children

A lot of adults are sick of Christmas with only two and a half weeks to go, but there are lots of children out there who are excited and eagerly awaiting the big day.  There are plenty of ways to celebrate Christmas in these last few weeks:

1. Read some of the magical Christmas stories that we have here in the library.  One of my favourite new Christmas books is Father Christmas needs a wee by Nicholas Allan about Father Christmas who has too many drinks when he is out delivering presents and desperately needs to get home for a toilet break.  We have plenty of other great Christmas books in the library and you can check out a selection of these in our Children’s Christmas Reading Booklist.

2. Bake some special Christmas cookies, cupcakes or mince pies using recipes in our Christmas cookbooks.

3. Make some very creative Christmas crafts and decorations to make your tree look stunning or put them up around your house.

4. Listen to some Christmas music.  There are plenty of traditional Christmas carols that you can sing along to or new Christmas songs by The Wiggles, Hi-Five or Bob the Builder.

5. Watch some very funny Christmas movies, including my favourites The Santa Clause, Elf, Muppet Christmas Carol.

If you want more ideas of Christmasy things to do or want to find out some information about Christmas and how different people celebrate it, you could check out our Children’s Christmas pages.

 

2009’s crop of Christmas tunes

It’s always interesting to see who releases a Christmas album at the end of each year. This year, those who are prepared to ‘Pa rum pa pum pum’ with the little drummer boy or ‘Fa la la la la’ while decking the halls are a mixture of the expected and the surprising. One of the most surprising is Bob Dylan with his Christmas in the heart. He’s singing old favourites such as ‘Here comes Santa Claus’ and ‘Silver Bells’. It was been receiving good reviews. Proceeds are going to charity.

New Zealand Christmas albums

Another album for Charity is Merry Christmas baby, a New Zealand compilation with proceeds going to Plunket. It includes the Jordan Luck band doing ‘Barbie dolls for Baghdad’ as well as other Kiwi favourites such as Opshop, Jackie Clarke, Whirimako Black, Hollie Smith and Annie Crummer.

The other New Zealand Christmas albums for 2009 are from Hayley Westenra and her Christmas Magic album with familiar seasonal carols and popular Christmas songs. It includes a duet with Ronan Keating. Howard Morrison has also posthumously released the Christmas collection which has 14 classic carols.

Classics and crooners

Neil Diamond’s A cherry cherry Christmas includes brand-new yuletide performances penned by Neil plus re-mastered seasonal classics.

Sting doesn’t quite commit to a Christmas album settling with a winter themed album conjuring the season of spirits featuring Christmas carols and lullabies spanning the centuries on If on a winter’s night.

This year’s crooner release is another Frank Sinatra one. Christmas with friends the friends being Rosemary Clooney, Mel Torme, Tony Bennett & Bill Evans and Ray Charles & Betty Carla.

Other albums coming soon to a library near you are Timeless Christmas with the greats, Country Christmas collection, Christmas crooners collection and R&B Christmas Hits.

For more Christmas music, see:

• Our page on Christmas music at Christchurch City Libraries
• Our listing of local Christmas music events
• Christmas music posts here on the blog

Terrisa, Selection and Access Librarian

 

Follow the books…books…books…follow the books

…all the way to the annual Aranui family festival, better known as AFFIRM at Wainoni Park (Hampshire St, Aranui) this Saturday 5th December 2009!!

Between 10am and 4pm, you’ll find amongst many great things the pretty faces of Christchurch City Library staff promoting our wonderful services to the community at our awesome stall!!

You’ll also be able to check out some great food stalls, what the latest gossip is amongst the community and enjoy the hip-hop flavas of Nesian Mystik!!

Check out our ‘Pulse’ website to read comments from organiser Rachael Fonotia or better yet come on down to AFFIRM this Saturday and see for yourself!! Oh and did I mention that it’s FREE?!!!

 

Staying cool at Christmas

All they want for Christmas is some decent music...

Ah the magic, the wonder, the teeth-grating annoyance of Christmas, specifically the kind of sentimental musical fare that verily drips with peppermint flavoured sugar syrup.  Usually I like a bit of tackiness but by the time Christmas Eve rolls around I’m generally fed up to the eye teeth with insipid covers of Christmas “classics”.  Why the very mention of Cliff Richard or Mariah Carey is enough to make me tense up.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again.  The only way to go is to pick some Chrissie tunes of your own that don’t turn your stomach.  Here are my suggestions for a Merry (but not too merry) Christmas.

• Christmas with Soul - This album is 80% gold.  My pick  would have to be Chuck Berry’s “Merry Christmas Baby” and The Moonglows with “Hey Santa Claus” but there are a couple of tracks on this that veer a little too far from soul into schmaltz…but that’s what the skip button’s for isn’t it?  Don’t be tricked into trying out Gospel Christmas with Soul (like I did), as it has only one gospel track and very little in the way of soul either.
• Christmas puddin’ - Kiwi laidback jazz arrangements of a few select tunes make up this fruity treat by Twinset.  My favourite track?  “Oh little town of Bethlehem” with a touch of a bossanova beat.  This might be the most chilled out part of your Christmas day.
• Silent Nightclub – Prefer your Christmas albums to feature lounged-up covers of nineties rap hits like “Ice, ice baby”?  Sure the Christmas connection is tenuous, particularly in the Southern Hemisphere but there are more “traditional” tunes on this lounge album to keep you in a festive frame of mind along with those of the “Like a virgin” variety.
• New Orleans Christmas – You really can’t go too wrong with a Putumayo Christmas album and this Big Easy offering is no exception.  If there’s any kind of music in the world that says “party” it’s this.  Top-tapping good times.
• DVD it - Don’t go past the music DVDs this festive season.  Earlier this year we got the Johnny Cash Christmas specials 1976 to 1979 providing retro nostalgia aplently.  Choose one of these or perhaps Chris Isaak’s 2008 yuletide offering to keep you safe from whatever ickness they decide to put on TV on Christmas day.

Any suggestions for audiovisual delights to help you keep your sanity this Christmas?

 

What happened to pop stars that can actually sing?

While watching the Top 40 music show on C4 last night I got increasingly annoyed seeing the junk that makes up our top music in New Zealand at the moment.  Out of the top five I don’t think there was one artist who could actually sing in their own right without their voice being altered digitally.  Maybe I’m just getting old but I don’t actually like it at all and I wonder whether it would be cheaper for record companies to ‘build’ their own pop star on a computer.  Take Britney Spears for example.  She was booed off the stage at several of her recent Australian concerts because she was quite clearly lip-syncing to pre-recorded music.  It seems to be mainly R&B artists who use it and you’ve got to wonder if they’re actually just a pretty face with no musical talent.

I saw an interesting piece on 3 News last week that was talking about the software that pop artists use to alter their voices, called Aut0-Tune.  It’s a computer programme that can perfect your pitch and smooth over any off-notes, similar to the Photoshop programme that can perfect images.  According to this article there are three brothers in Brooklyn who have created songs out of news items.  They call it Auto-Tune the News and take particular news reports and use the Auto-Tune programme to alter voices and make it into a song, adding themselves into the news as well.

I’m pretty sure most of my favourite artists/groups such as James Taylor, The Killers, James Morrison, and Dave Dobbyn don’t use the technology.  Who are your favourite, naturally talented musicians?

 

Music legend James Taylor is coming to New Zealand

When I read on James Taylor’s fan site that the great man himself was coming to Auckland on April 10, 2010  along with Carole King, I was ecstatic! Their Troubadour Reunion concert was advertised yesterday in the Sunday Star Times, along with an interview with Taylor and his long-time friend and collaborator Carole King.   I have been a fan of James Taylor for years now after my dad introduced me to his music and his albums take up a significant space in my CD collection.  He’s one of those artists that whenever I listen to his music my soul glows because it just makes me so happy.  He has an amazing voice, which I think has aged like a fine wine, and has written some amazing songs, such as Fire and Rain, Carolina in my mind, Line ‘em up, and My travelling star.

I’ll definitely be lining up for tickets when they go on sale on Monday 23 November.

If you’re also a fan, we have some of his albums in the library including my favourites October Road, You’ve got a friend: the best of James Taylor, and One Man Band.