{"id":7161,"date":"2015-12-13T23:25:04","date_gmt":"2015-12-14T07:25:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/?p=7161"},"modified":"2015-12-13T23:25:04","modified_gmt":"2015-12-14T07:25:04","slug":"a-new-christmas-classic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/2015\/12\/a-new-christmas-classic\/","title":{"rendered":"A New Christmas Classic?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>New Christmas songs of quality are rare. Musician, composer, producer and lead sheet maven Don Sickler suggests that he has found one. The song began life with a title that hardly suggested Christmas. Its composer, the late pianist Eddie Higgins <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-7162\" src=\"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/Eddie-Higgins-BW.jpg\" alt=\"Eddie Higgins B&amp;W\" width=\"159\" height=\"200\" \/>(pictured), recorded it as &#8220;Moonlight On Kinkakuji&#8221; with bassist Jay Leonhart and drummer Joe Ascione in his 2009 Venus album <em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Portraits-Love-Eddie-Higgins\/dp\/B0021UP28M\/?_encoding=UTF8&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=9325&amp;linkCode=ur2&amp;tag=rifftidougram-20\" target=\"_blank\">Portraits Of Love<\/a><\/em>. With a key change and a lyric by Roger Schore, it<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/Lena-Seikaly-bw.jpg\" alt=\"Lena Seikaly b&amp;w\" width=\"175\" height=\"150\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-7163\" \/> became \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Almost Christmas.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Sickler made videos of three versions of the song featuring Washington, DC, vocalist Lena Seikaly (pictured). Here, Ms. Seikaly sings it accompanied by the veteran pianist-bandleader Cecilia Coleman and bassist Kanoa Mendenhall, whom Sickler describes as \u00e2\u20ac\u0153an 18-year-old rising star.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n<div align=\"center\">\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/2tUNyon9RcI?rel=0\" width=\"540\" height=\"360\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<div>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">In a popular music marketplace dominated by rock, hip-hop and country, I wonder whether any song can become a new holiday perennial. If that is possible, perhaps &#8220;Almost Christmas&#8221; has a chance.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">For <em>Rifftides<\/em> reviews of Lena Seikaly&#8217;s first two albums, go <a href=\"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/2009\/08\/recent_listening_seikaly_broom.html\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/2015\/01\/recent-listening-lena-seikaly.html\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a>. Musicians who may be interested in an \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Almost Christmas\u00e2\u20ac\u009d lead sheet may consult <a href=\"https:\/\/jazzleadsheets.com\" target=\"_blank\">Don Sickler\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s website<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>New Christmas songs of quality are rare. Musician, composer, producer and lead sheet maven Don Sickler suggests that he has found one. The song began life with a title that hardly suggested Christmas. Its composer, the late pianist Eddie Higgins (pictured), recorded it as &#8220;Moonlight On Kinkakuji&#8221; with bassist Jay Leonhart and drummer Joe Ascione [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":7163,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-7161","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-main","8":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7161","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7161"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7161\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7163"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7161"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7161"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7161"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}