David Halliday & Kya Karine - Christmas Fire (2019)

Reviewing Halliday’s previous recorded work with guitarist Corey Christianson, Billy Kerr remarked in “Saxophone Journal,” “His saxophone playing and his music are at the highest levels, great dark, fat sound, wonderful time and feel, as well as a clean, fast technique . . . I’m sure he could play any kind of music.”

Indeed, Halliday’s versatility extends from the aggressive R&B heard on his earlier albums through the sensitive, straight-ahead jazz ballad-playing on his album “Dreamsville” (whose title track has to date received over 5 million streams on Spotify’s Coffee Table Jazz playlist) to his gig as a featured soloist with the Utah Symphony, performing John Williams’s knuckle-busting virtuoso piece for alto saxophone “Joy Ride,” from the score of the film “Catch Me If You Can.” Raised on a musical diet of the thousands of records in his dad’s jazz collection, Halliday studied privately during his teen years with the great Joe Henderson and as a member of the Monterey Jazz Festival High School All-Stars, shared the festival stage with Dizzy Gillespie with whom he swapped solos on Thelonious Monk’s “Round Midnight.” Since then, he’s performed or recorded with Aerosmith, Patti Austin, Bob Berg, Kurt Bestor, Wil Blades, Randy Brecker, Brian Bromberg, Sam Cardon, Pete Christlieb, Eddie Daniels, Kevin Eubanks, Larry Goldings, Josh Groban, Conrad Herwig, Javon Jackson, The Harry James Orchestra, Wynton Marsalis, Brett Michaels, The Glenn Miller Orchestra, Kenny Neal, Arturo Sandoval, E.C. Scott, The Temptations, Stanley Turrentine, Mark Whitfield, and many more. He has also opened for Buddy Guy, George Clinton and Parliament Funkadelic, Diana Krall, and B.B King. As a student at Loyola University in New Orleans, Halliday played in drummer Stanton Moore’s band Galactic and has recently recorded an album with Moore to be released next year. Halliday holds current academic positions as Associate Adjunct Professor of Saxophone at the University of Utah and Director of Jazz and Popular Music Studies at Westminster College.

Halliday and Karine began their ongoing musical collaboration in fall of 2018 by co-creating Amy Jade’s Beehive Society, an ambitious, large-ensemble tribute to Amy Winehouse featuring three vocalists, three horn players, and a full rhythm section, which has drawn enthusiastic audiences in multiple venues over the past year.

24-year-old “Bass Princess” Kya Karine, like Halliday, grew up in a musically supportive household. Her parents encouraged her study of violin in elementary, voice in junior high, and bass in high school. She studied jazz at the University of Utah on upright and electric where she worked with faculty: Russell Schmidt, Kris Johnson, David Halliday, Geoffrey Miller, Denson Angulo, and Keven Johansen. She also studied with the great Rodney Whitaker, whom she considers a mentor, and Felix Pastorious, son of legendary bassist Jaco Pastorious. Karine graduated in 2017 with her BM in Jazz Performance and a minor in Psychology and has since continued her study of great jazz bassists, her favorites being Ray Brown, Paul Chambers, Ron Carter, Christian McBride, Esperanza Spalding, Oscar Pettiford, and Charlie Haden. In 2018 Karine worked extensively with David Osmond (Donnie’s nephew) in the Osmond Chapman Orchestra (OCO) and plays on the OCO’s recently released album, “There’s More Where That Came From.” Karine has also worked with Loren Allred (“The Greatest Showman”), Rashawn Ross (Dave Matthews Band), and Big Bad Voodoo Daddy. She spent almost two years after college learning the business and marketing side of the music industry by working as the Executive Assistant to Caleb Chapman, John LaPorta Jazz Educator of the Year (2011) and founder and chairman of Caleb Chapman’s Soundhouse, a 65-time Down Beat and 12-time Utah Best of State award-winning after-school music program. While Chapman’s assistant, Karine worked closely with Javon Jackson and spent invaluable time talking about Jackson’s experiences in music and soaking up his wisdom. Karine counts Jackson among her most influential mentors. Karine is currently a student of Philip Kuehn (Jonathan Batiste, “Late Show with Steven Colbert”, and Director of Jazz Studies at Snow College) and continues to freelance with numerous groups across the U.S. playing jazz, pop, rock, folk, and bluegrass. She fronts her own instrumental trio, Kya K. & Co., maintains her own private bass studio, and recently joined Band On The Moon, a Salt Lake City rock band with plans to record an album with renowned Los Angeles producer Lior Goldenberg (Macy Gray, Sheryl Crow, Alanis Morrissette, Allen Stone) in the spring of 2020.

Pianist Courtney Isaiah Smith, another graduate of the University of Utah (in Jazz Composition and Performance) where he studied the work of McCoy Tyner, Herbie Hancock, and Vince Guaraldi, among many other modern jazz greats, has a thorough grounding in the music of the Black American Church, a seminal influence on the development of jazz, having played organ since childhood in Salt Lake’s Calvary Baptist Church, where he continues to direct and accompany the choir and improvise complementary musical background to sermons. He and Halliday have developed a telepathic musical rapport over the past eleven years as co-musical directors of Jazz Vespers, the annual holiday season jazz concert series sponsored by Reverend Tom Goldsmith’s First Unitarian Church, a series that became a Salt Lake institution, running for thirty years before its final performance last Christmas. The house band that Halliday and Smith formed for the last ten years of that series continues under the name the Jazz Vespers Quartet (JVQ), leading an ongoing Monday night jam session at Salt Lake’s downtown venue Gracie’s, where they’ve played 275 performances over the past 5 ½ years, drawing the participation of scores of local musicians as well as a number of nationally prominent artists like Delfeayo Marsalis and members of his Uptown Jazz Orchestra, Carl Allen, Sean Jones, David Sanchez, Sarah Vaughn Vocal Competition winner Quiana Lynell, Art Hirahara, Elan Trotman, Justin Kauflin, Philip Lassiter, and Akiko Tsuruga.

Similar to Halliday and Smith’s years of shared musical interactions, Karine and drummer Parker Swenson have their own history of interwoven musical experiences as rising stars in Salt Lake City’s music scene. They attended the University of Utah at the same time and were in the Jazz Department’s top ensembles together: The Red Hots (now The Michie Quintet) and Jazz Ensemble, both under the direction of Detroit trumpeter and Count Basie Band alum Kris Johnson. While in The Red Hots together they performed for legendary jazz drummer Jack DeJohnette.

Another graduate of the University of Utah in Jazz Performance, Swenson has studied with such masters as Peter Erskine, Kenny Washington and Carl Allen. Much in demand on the Salt Lake City music scene with a reputation for versatility and preparedness beyond his 26 years, Swenson is quickly becoming one of Salt Lake City’s busiest drummers, currently performing four-to-five times per week. Halliday bears partial responsibility for Swenson’s busy schedule, asking him to join the JVQ in 2018 when Steve Lyman retired from the band after nine years, and also making Swenson the regular drummer in three more of his bands: The Number Ones, The New Orleans Project, and David Halliday’s Latin Jazz All-Stars.

This album displays the formidable talents of these four musicians at their very best, presenting a set of innovative interpretations in the jazz tradition, ranging in mood from the intimate to the exultant.

Appropriately, “Christmas Fire” opens with “Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire,” better known by its alternative title “The Christmas Song,” written in less than an hour on a sweltering day during a Southern California heat wave (no air-conditioning in those days) by Bob Wells and Mel Torme – an effort to “stay cool by thinking cool,” invokes such cold-weather imagery as Jack Frost, eskimos, and Santa. First recorded in 1946 by The Nat King Cole Trio, a track that peaked at #3 on the pop charts and was eventually inducted into the NARAS Hall of Fame. Augmented with a small string section, the recording charted again in ’47, ’49 and, with fuller arrangements (including one by Nelson Riddle), again in 1953, ’54, and ‘60. The song has been covered by numerous singers, including Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra, Rosemary Clooney, Celine Dion, Christina Aguilera, Michael Bublé, and Whitney Houston, and such jazz instrumentalists as Vince Guaraldi, Kenny Burrell and two great tenor saxophonists, Gene Ammons and Dexter Gordon. But the primary inspiration for this album’s rendition is the Nat Cole original, with Smith quoting string lines from the famous Cole recording, Halliday echoing Nat’s velvety vocal with his breathy tenor, and Karine complementing the proceedings with a subtle bass solo.

While “Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire” celebrates the simple joys of the season, the second track of this album “Joy to the World,” arranged by Halliday, expands this celebration to a transcendent joy – an exultant shout of redemption for our fallen world reunited in song with the heavenly host: “The Lord has come . . . Let heaven and nature sing!” With words penned in the early 18th century by the English writer Isaac Watts, inspired by Psalm 98 – “Make a joyful noise to the Lord, all the earth; break forth into joyous song and sing praises!” – and music arranged in the mid-19th century by Lowell Mason, “Joy to the World” had by the late 20th century become the most-published Christmas hymn in North America. The “joyful noise” made here by Halliday, Karine and company is actually the most elaborately arranged track on the entire album. Smith opens with some meditative chords and then plays the single note melody underlying the familiar lyric “Let heaven and nature sing,” at which point Karine takes up her bow and establishes an insistent arco pulse (an idea Halliday got from Coldplay’s “Viva La Vida”) that Smith quickly reinforces with piano chords, over which Halliday eventually states the melody, repeating it an octave above, thus introducing Smith’s first solo, which begins with lyrical, Keith-Jarrett-like musings and builds gradually in intensity, at which point Halliday enters to increase the intensity with his first solo, ending with his recapitulation of the melody over the resumption of Karine’s arco pulse, followed by Smith’s second solo, which builds to a climactic ascending run that Halliday picks up telepathically to take the song out with his second improvised solo.

While “Joy to the World” celebrates the Nativity of Christ, the third track on this album “Oh Come, O Come Emmanuel,” arranged by Halliday, is an Advent hymn expressing prayerful anticipation of that event, as announced by the prophet Isaiah hundreds of years before the Nativity: “Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign. Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel” (Isaiah 7:14) and the angel who appears to Joseph in Matthew’s Gospel repeats the prophet’s words:

. . . behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying, “Joseph, son of David, do not fear to take Mary your wife, for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit; she will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.” All this took place to fulfil what the Lord had spoken by the prophet: “Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and his name shall be called Emmanuel” (which means, God with us). – Matthew 1:20-23

The most common English translation of this originally Medieval Latin hymn (“Veni, veni, Emmanuel”) was published in 1861 by John Mason Neale; the most commonly used melody may have origins in 15th century France. In the present interpretation the song’s anticipatory theme becomes wildly anticipatory, presenting the fastest tempo on the album, with Karine holding down a blistering but solid four-to-the-bar bottom, while Halliday and Smith soar in exuberant flights of fancy over the beat and Swenson gradually builds the intensity of the performance to an exhilarating climactic drum solo over Halliday’s riffs.

“Do You Hear What I Hear?” the album’s fourth track, arranged by Smith, was written by Noel Regney and Gloria Shayne (then married) in October of 1962, the month in which the decades-long Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union probably came closest to getting hot, brought to the brink of nuclear aggression by the Cuban Missile Crisis, during which the two super powers faced off over the Soviet deployment of nuclear missiles in Cuba – 90 miles from Florida. “Do You Hear What I Hear?” with its Nativity imagery – a star, a lamb, a shepherd, a “song high above the trees,” and a child shivering in the cold, “who will bring us goodness and light” – clearly alludes to the birth of the Prince of Peace, though never explicitly mentioning His name, and the words of the song’s “mighty king” – “Pray for peace, people everywhere!” – carried a pacific plea particularly poignant in the context of those dark and troubled days. A recording of the song by the Harry Simeone Chorale (of “Little Drummer Boy” fame) released around Thanksgiving of 1962 sold over a quarter million copies over the Christmas season and Bing Crosby’s cover charted at #5 on the pop charts the following year. Since then, the song has been covered by Jack Jones, Eddie Fisher, Andy Williams, Pat Boone, Diahann Carroll, Perry Como, Robert Goulet, Mahalia Jackson, Johnny Mathis, Gladys Knight & the Pips, The Carpenters, The Hampton String Quartet, Whitney Houston, Anne Murray, Glenn Campbell, Patti LaBelle, The United States Air Force Symphony Orchestra, Rosie O’Donnell with Elmo, Mannheim Steamroller, Kenny G, Carrie Underwood, Johnny Cash, Bob Dylan, and hundreds more. Halliday, Karine, and company’s rendition here opens in a gentle, relaxed mood with Smith’s piano intro and Halliday’s statement of the melody, followed by Smith’s piano improvisation (one of the most beautiful solos on the album) and Halliday’s solo, in which he builds tension with appropriate allusions to John Coltrane’s “A Love Supreme” that he resolves by resuming the performance’s opening relaxed feel to restate the melody and bring the proceedings to a close with some lyrical, peaceful musings.

The closing track of this album, Halliday’s arrangement of “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas,” takes the listener back to its beginning – to the simple joys of the Yuletide season: trimming the tree, faithful friends gathering near, and all your troubles miles away. Written by Hugh Martin and Ralph Blane, the song was introduced by Judy Garland, singing it to lift the downcast spirits of Margaret O’Brien, her near-inconsolable five-year-old little sister in the 1944 MGM musical “Meet Me in St. Louis.” AFI has ranked the song #76 in its 100 Top Tunes in American Cinema. In the simplest performance on the album, Halliday, adopting a very slow tempo, opens by repeating variations on the “do you hear what I hear” phrase from the previous track and then plays the melody straight through with a tenderness that would touch Judy Garland herself and closes with more playful variations of the “do you hear what I hear” phrase, channeling his mentor Joe Henderson at his most profoundly intimate.

TRACKLIST

1. David Halliday;Kya Karine - The Christmas Song
2. David Halliday;Kya Karine - Joy to the World
3. David Halliday;Kya Karine - O Come, O Come, Emmanuel
4. David Halliday;Kya Karine - Do You Hear What I Hear?
5. David Halliday;Kya Karine - Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas