TRADITION IS usually associated with the holiday season. And so, to put it simply (no, I'm not going into that "long story short" business again), I wanted Ton Son to start a Christmas tradition of its own.
The project is pretty straigthforward : Ton Son rearranges and recreates one of the "lesser-known" Christmas carols or songs. I'm saying "lesser-known" here, because I personally think that some of the prettiest holiday season melodies are rather obscure or... kind of underground, if I may put it this way. Just think of "Old Toy Trains", "Adeste Fideles" or "Hark the Herald Angels Sing", for starters. To me, their aura seems more majestic, more serene than "I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus", "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" or, say, "Jingle Bells". I don't want to start judging or ranking songs, here, so I'll let you make your own mind on this matter.
Anyways, following that trail of thought, I immediately chose "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen". Being one of the only Christmas carols set in a minor key, it has a lenghty melody where the verse merges into the chorus, making them part of the same musical phrase. Early on, I wanted to make an instrumental, indie-rock version of the song. I always admired how instrumentals can take an arrangement to a whole new level and make you fall in love with the song all over again, for totally different reasons (Vince Guaraldi's A Charlie Brown Christmas, or Jean-Pierre Rampal, Alexandre Lagoya and Michel Legrand's exquisite Pastorales de Noël). If you ever find a vinyl copy of the latter (it's never been re-edited), hold on to it !!! It is a magnificient piece of instrumental music artistry. Period.
The project is pretty straigthforward : Ton Son rearranges and recreates one of the "lesser-known" Christmas carols or songs. I'm saying "lesser-known" here, because I personally think that some of the prettiest holiday season melodies are rather obscure or... kind of underground, if I may put it this way. Just think of "Old Toy Trains", "Adeste Fideles" or "Hark the Herald Angels Sing", for starters. To me, their aura seems more majestic, more serene than "I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus", "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" or, say, "Jingle Bells". I don't want to start judging or ranking songs, here, so I'll let you make your own mind on this matter.
Anyways, following that trail of thought, I immediately chose "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen". Being one of the only Christmas carols set in a minor key, it has a lenghty melody where the verse merges into the chorus, making them part of the same musical phrase. Early on, I wanted to make an instrumental, indie-rock version of the song. I always admired how instrumentals can take an arrangement to a whole new level and make you fall in love with the song all over again, for totally different reasons (Vince Guaraldi's A Charlie Brown Christmas, or Jean-Pierre Rampal, Alexandre Lagoya and Michel Legrand's exquisite Pastorales de Noël). If you ever find a vinyl copy of the latter (it's never been re-edited), hold on to it !!! It is a magnificient piece of instrumental music artistry. Period.
Back to "God Rest Ye", now.
As the track took form, I decided to add some cello to it, which ended up being a pretty good choice. Thanks to Lorraine Gauthier's mastery of the four strings beast, and Jean-Philippe Villemure's mastering arts, I was able to put the finishing touch to Ton Son's very first free holiday season track.
Once again, I enlisted the talented Nicolas Grenier to create the artwork for the "album" cover (the one featured at the top of this post).
And voilà : Ton Son's gift to you, for 2014's holiday season.
You will get more, come 2015's Christmas time. In the meantime, happy holidays !
