CELIA:
Winter is the final season of our year-long recording journey, and we wanted to go out on a high note! We don’t consider it an ending — it’s the pivot to a new annual cycle. We’ve tried to express that through song choices and arrangements that are celebratory and anticipatory.

All year long, we were living in multiple seasons musically – the one we were releasing and the one we were recording. Before embarking on our Winter Suite, I knew I needed to take a deep breath and think about everything I had learned from and with everyone. So I asked Bálint to provide lots of room to play. We both agreed that meant leaning into the jazz end of the style spectrum. And, once again, he exceeded anything I could have imagined.

We hope you have as much fun listening to these tracks as we had recording them. And we’ve added a little surprise at the end, to sum things up.

BÁLINT:
For me, Winter is the most exciting time of the year. The holidays, gathering with family and loved ones – it’s just full of joy.

When working on the arrangements, I wanted to capture that upbeat energy with some fun, lively music. I’ve long admired Django Reinhardt’s style and felt his incredibly spirited sound would be a perfect match for our final season.

Celia doesn’t just love jazz, she sings it in a uniquely personal way. So this felt like a perfect way to conclude our year-long journey through such a wide range of styles.

It’s hard to believe this is the first time I’m recording a Jule Styne song, and what a great one it is. I’ve been singing it since elementary school, and Bálint has given it a knowing, adult vibe without losing its childlike sense of fun. And those Sammy Cahn lyrics certainly support that approach.

Styne and Cahn actually wrote it in Hollywood during a heat wave. It was first recorded by Vaughn Monroe and released after Thanksgiving in 1945. It was an immediate hit, reaching No. 1 on the Billboard Best Sellers chart for five weeks after Christmas. Since then, many great singers have covered it.

Special thanks to my backup singers, who I’ve dubbed “The Snowballs.” It’s the three musicians (Seoyeon Im, Ken Maletkova and Trevor Robertson), Bálint, and our studio photographer Hannah Jane (a wonderful singer in her own right). And that’s Bálint on the sleighbells.

Words and Music by Irving Berlin
Irving Berlin Music Company

I’ve loved this Irving Berlin song since hearing it in the 1942 movie Holiday Inn. Bing Crosby did the first recording, with Bob Crosby and His Orchestra. In fact, it was the B side for his recording of WHITE CHRISTMAS. That’s my kind of hidden gem!

Bálint’s “gypsy jazz” arrangement offered us all lots of room to improvise and gave me the opportunity to do some vocalese. Special thanks to my friend and engineer Scott Lehrer for letting me try lots of different things and then choosing the best options.

Music by Matt Dennis/Lyric by Frank Kilduff
Maxey Music Company

It took a while to settle on this last song in our last seasonal Suite. We wanted something that would gently pivot out of Winter and connect the dots with our Spring Suite. But nothing seemed to quite fit the bill.

I did a deep dive online, by key word and by singers I admired. That led me to June Christy and her track on the Christmas Hidden Gems, Vol 1 compilation album. She had recorded the first cover of this song, after it had been introduced by The Four Freshmen.

Songwriter Matt Dennis went on to write some great standards including ANGEL EYES, EVERYTHING HAPPENS TO ME and LET’S GET AWAY FROM IT ALL. But his lyricist presented something of a musical mystery. The sheet music (from an old issue of Sheet Music magazine where it was featured as a “Forgotten Gem”) credited the lyrics to “Brigham Townshend.” And the copyright was by Matt Dennis and “Brigham Townsend.” But when I purchased the mechanical license, the lyricist was Frank Kilduff. Hmmm. Off I went to the encyclopedic Will Friedwald, who instantly sent me a picture of the label from June Christy’s Gone For The Day record. It credited Frank Killduff as the lyricist. Double Hmmm. Will pointed me towards the ASCAP database, which credited Kilduff with one L. So that’s who I’m crediting and how I’m spelling it. If you have any other insights, please share them!

Words and Music by Jonathan Larson
Universal Music Corp. and Finster and Lucy LLC

This one is not technically part of our Winter Suite. It’s meant as a parting thought after FOUR SEASONS OF SONG. The idea of an Epilogue was a flash of inspiration by Bálint, and the arrangement was his gift to me to mark the end of our project together.

Bálint immediately proposed SEASONS OF LOVE from Rent. I had some other ideas, and he left the final choice to me. Not surprisingly, I was leaning towards something less familiar. But because we were going to do an abbreviated version of whatever we chose, I ultimately agreed that the listener had to quickly recognize the song and hopefully even know the words.

Bálint arranged two versions of different lengths. Unsure which would have the desired effect until we heard it in context, we recorded them both. What you hear is the shorter version, and I have the longer arrangement tucked in my back pocket for future use.

I’m so glad we ended this journey with me at the microphone and Bálint at the piano. I think you can hear that we communicate very well with each other. We ought to — we created 13 tracks featuring 10 musicians for four EPs, each with a distinct musical style, over the course of one crazy year.