It is the season for Christmas pops concerts. This season I will be playing perhaps the best one of these in the Phoenix area, the Salt River Brass Holiday Pops concert, popular enough that it is presented as a triple in three large venues. Very worth attending if you are in the area.

I love the season. Which is good as orchestral players get a lot of Christmas music and Christmas gigs. When I was in the Nashville Symphony besides several run-outs, the run of the Nutcracker, and our Holiday Pops series we also presented a “special event” with Amy Grant in the then new basketball arena. I played this show twice. One of the years it was in association with a tour with Amy Grant that I opted out of as we had small children (I played the run of the Nutcracker instead).

The Amy Grant Christmas events were especially good events. Sometimes, hearing or playing Christmas concerts, I think to myself that conductor schools should have a class called “Holiday Concerts 101” where they learn how to put together a program that an audience will enjoy. For sure some conductors missed that class and manage to put together a boring show in what should be a festive season. Ronn Huff however must have had that class; he put together quite a show with Amy Grant.

Variety is one key element. I was reminded of this very recently as a friend gave my wife a recording called Amy Grant: A Christmas to Remember. It was recorded not long after I left Nashville. About half of the recording is of arrangements I played there by Ronn Huff, recorded with the “Nashville Studio Orchestra.” I played with these players a number of times–more than half on the roster listed on the recording were in the symphony when I was there. (Other players recorded the rest of the tracks in LA–these arrangements do not sound familiar, they must have been developed for a different Amy Grant project).

This recording gives an idea of what variety should look like on a Christmas show. There are two instrumentals on the recording that I particularly like in this context. One is “Gabriel’s Oboe” with Bobby Taylor as soloist, Principal Oboe in Nashville. I have heard this done on tuba (!) but it really works on oboe, the audience loved it.

The other instrumental is called “Highland Cathedral.” First, in the arena show version of this, the number was really impressive visually with a very large group of bag pipers walking in down on the floor into the arena! On the recording the assisting artists are the Nashville Pipes and Drums, Jay Dawson, Pipe Major. I played a couple gigs with Jay when I was there, in particular with a horn quartet called the Holiday Horns; he was some years before me Third Horn in the Nashville Symphony and was a good arranger and conductor.

The tune opens with a solo piper, which must be Jay himself. Then not long after the horns come in, rather out of tune with the rather sharp bagpipes. In the recording you can hear the horns very well. Actually, in any recording, there is a perspective that comes out in the production and mastering. In this case, the sound is very much like the listener is actually sitting in the horn section in the orchestra. The horns are quite prominent, with everything I think pretty much like you would hear it if you were playing the gig.

So, if you see it in a store, think about this CD. If nothing else you can relive with me a memory or two and imagine on this number in particular that you are in the Nashville Symphony playing in the horn section on the special event in an arena with Amy Grant.