Preview
MICHAEL BURGESS
Saturday, December 20
Jack Singer Concert Hall
(Epcor Centre)
Some might call an R and B version of "Silent Night" sacrilege, but world famous tenor Michael Burgess likes mixing up his holiday traditions.
Known for playing Jean Valjean in Les Miserables, Burgess is returning to Calgary with a Christmas concert that is now becoming an annual event. Along with his band, which includes Doug Riley (piano), Ben Riley (drums) and Chris Mitchell (woodwinds), he is offering the re-tooled "Silent Night" – which he says gives the song a more open resonance – along with four original tunes and other reworked holiday classics.
"If it is done with honesty you can change the attitude towards songs," he says, noting that it’s important not to change the shape of the piece. "If they are good songs, the truth of where they came from never really goes away and you can dress them up or dress them down in a way that is stark and revealing."
Listening to Burgess talk about sharing Christmas with six siblings and recounting his early musical performances at midnight mass, it’s clear that he enjoys the holidays. Like his tinkering with "Silent Night," with each Christmas he is able to recall the past and infuse it with the present.
"I think (Christmas is) pretty special," he says. "It has all the nostalgia from when we were kids. All the things we grew up with at home – mixed memories and mixed feelings.
"We all come from a tradition. Then we grow up and create tradition. Then the next generation does the same thing. It’s always this blending and re-mixing."
Burgess and his band bring that sense of blending and remixing to their reworking of holiday standards, but their changes aren’t without a sense of history. Citing "Silent Night," he speaks passionately about the odd chances and twists of fate that brought the song into existence – the song now attributed to Father Joseph Mohr and Franz Gruber was first performed in 1818 but disappeared until a travelling organ repairman wound up with a copy of the music and the writing credit was given to Michael Hayden.
"It’s like someone threw a note in a bottle and threw it out in the ocean," says Burgess "It’s odd how this karma happens. Then it turns out to be one of the most important songs, in so many cultures all over the world, as a Christmas song... It’s just an incredible story. And yet the two guys who wrote it died in obscurity and didn’t know they had written one of the songs that was destined to be, forever."
History aside, Burgess definitely has criteria in place when choosing holiday favourites. He says that a Christmas song should be simple (in the best sense of the word), because that’s what gives a song its staying power. Few pop songs are covered more than once, but musicians don’t think twice about creating another version of "Jingle Bells." Hearing these new interpretations is just another holiday tradition that Burgess enjoys.
"For 11 months of the year you don’t hear it, but it is all part of that Christmas spirit people talk about," he says "I think it’s a remarkable time and it is a shame that it is here and gone so quickly." |
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