holiday

  • collage of 1999 contemporary jazz and holiday album covers from Dave Koz, Kenny G, Hiroshima, Take 6, Brian Culbertson and more.
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    Top Contemporary Jazz December 3, 1999: Kenny G, Dave Koz and more

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    The top ten contemporary jazz recordings 25 years ago, ranked by ContemporaryJazz.com! As it was in the 1990s, Kenny G topped the chart. However, this week he had two recordings: his renditions of standards and his third holiday album. Other Christmas and holiday music were moving into the top 10, including a nice compilation from…

  • Animated versions of Dave Koz, David Benoit, Jonathan Butler, Rick Braun, Peter White, and Richard Elliot
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    Animated Contemporary Jazz

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    Looks like Dave Koz published the 2020 livestream of The Greatest Hits of Christmas on Christmas Day 2021. This COVID-affected smooth jazz show has a segment with fun, animated versions of David Benoit, Peter White, Richard Elliot, Rick Braun, Jonathan Butler and Koz.

  • cover to The Wonder of Christmas by Scott Wilkie
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    The Wonder of Christmas by Scott Wilkie

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    Scott Wilkie has a new holiday recording called The Wonder of Christmas. It’s solo acoustic piano renditions of all of your seasonal favorites. With 17 covers of the classics, you’ll find several that you’ll have on your Christmas playlist. I remember being impressed by Scott’s first recording, Boundless, nearly 15 years ago. I wrote on…

  • turntable with Christmas decorations
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    Holiday Music Roundup: Remixes

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    I’ve been a fan of jazz remixes since I first heard the original Verve//Remixed. I guess it was a fad. I don’t see many anymore. I thought it was a good way to introduce younger generations to some classic jazz. However, some remixers completely destroyed any jazz element of some of the songs I heard….

  • cover art to A Night Before Christmas by contemporary jazz band Spyro Gyra
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    Spyro Gyra – A Night Before Christmas

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    “We’ve always had a yearning to do a record that was kind of a straightahead record – or at least something closer to a straightahead record than what we normally do,” says Spyro Gyra’s Jay Beckenstein. “But it’s always been very difficult to make that work in the context of what we do on most…