Christmas and Magic. 4′. 2023.
This is the first pop song I’ve composed. I have certainly skirted the area of pop, and of jazz, in some works, such as April Showers, In This Blue Room, and others, but this is my first no-doubt-about-it pop song. When Roy Powell came to me with lyrics for this and asked me to work on them, and to come up with music if I cared to, I immediately jumped in and heard this as a song in the Great American Songbook tradition. In any case, that’s what I wanted to write.
For earlier versions of this from 2022, see The history of Christmas and Magic. In 2023 I decided to see if there were any interest in recording this. Mark Wischkaemper of Austin, Texas, kindly made a demo with pianist Dan Redner. I sent this out to some people, and Michael Kraft, who had assembled the cast for the 2022 DePue Brothers / Callie Day / Dave Nobles performance, put me in touch with producer Joe Donofrio. Joe was the longtime manager for the late, great jazz guitarist Pat Martino, manages the Chicago tribute band Brass Transit, and seems, like Michael, to know everyone in the jazz and pop business.
Joe liked the demo and immediately thought that it would be a good fit with Andy Cooney, the founder of, and one-third of, the New York Tenors. Andy liked the song and agreed to record his track in Long Island, where he lives, with Fred Guarino of Tiki Recording, who works with the likes of Billy Joel and Jimmy Webb.
Joe then brought in pianist Demetrios Pappas, music director for Smokey Robinson, bassist Andy Lalasis, and drummer Bob Shomo, longtime Atlantic City casino musicians and stalwarts in the South Jersey jazz scene and beyond. All three have played for, basically, everybody in the club and casino world going back to the ’70s. Dee Pappas brought in additional ideas for the song, including a few chord changes and an 8-bar intro rather than the original 4-bar, most of which went into the mix when I wrote out the string and brass arrangement.
For that orchestra (Joe and I were exactly in step on how the arrangement should sound), I was able to turn closer to home. Our middle daughter Elena (Nellie) Kauffman plays the three cello parts, and her husband Joe is the three violins. Both are very active playing and teaching in the Philadelphia area. Nellie is in the Baroque trio Filament and other chamber ensembles and orchestras, and Joe plays for the Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia, Opera Philadelphia, Philadelphia Ballet, AVA, and many other groups. Martina Adams, our youngest, plays horn in the No Name Pops, Symphony in C, and in other orchestras, including subbing with the Philadelphia Orchestra this past summer. Her husband Hayden, a busy gigger, teacher, and administrator at the Settlement Music School, is the three trombones. For Martina I wrote some horn licks inspired by the great playing of Vince DeRosa on my Hi-Lo’s records of the late ’50s.
Randy Weaver of SoundPlex Studios in Pennsauken, NJ has recorded and engineered everybody in South Jersey, it seems, for decades, including Denis DiBlasio and lots of the jazz and pop scene. That this all was recorded in Pennsauken, the town of my birth, was a complete coincidence—the studio was Joe Donofrio’s suggestion—and a source of great amusement for me at first. SoundPlex inhabits a building literally four blocks from the house I grew up in, and was, at that time way back when, an Abbott’s Dairy (we had their milk delivered to our house) and then one of the places they made Prince Spaghetti (you could smell the sauce at times). Well, it is now a wonderful place to record and Randy is a fantastic engineer. To further deepen the connection, I went to high school with Randy and with Andy Lalasis. I didn’t know them then, since it’s a big school and they’re Pennsauken HS Class of ’72; I was a kid from the Class of ’74.
Andy Cooney liked the song, the arrangement, and how everything turned out so much that he’s taking it on his New York Tenors Ireland tour early this December—five times there in a duet version with Irish soprano Deirdre Masterson. They’ve recorded their own duet over this instrumental and have released it online and on Irish radio. Then he’ll perform it nine more times just before this Christmas in the U.S. with soprano Arianna Paz. I’m grateful to him, to my producer Joe, to lyricist Roy Powell who got this all going, and to all the musicians and engineers who made such a beautiful record!
(So far, I’ve also arranged this for SATB choir.)
Credits
Music by Kile Smith (ASCAP)
Lyrics by Roy Powell (ASCAP)
Arrangement by Kile Smith
3:56
Andy Cooney, vocal
Demetrios Pappas, piano
Andy Lalasis, electric bass
Bob Shomo, drums
Joseph Kauffman, violins
Elena Kauffman, cellos
Martina Adams, French horns
Hayden Adams, trombones
Andy Cooney recorded at Tiki Mastering Studios, engineer Fred Guarino, Glen Cove, NY.
All instruments recorded, edited, mixed, mastered at Soundplex Studios, engineer Randy Weaver, Pennsauken, NJ.
Joseph Donofrio, producer
Lyrics
Christmas and magic: words that we pair.
Christmas and magic: words that we share.
A child is smiling, a tree is glowing,
These are the gifts we often recall.
Yet nothing can match all the joys overflowing
Out of the Lord’s gift for us and for all.
Christmas and magic: our love expressed.
Christmas and magic: and we are blessed.
Our family with us, our friends around us,
These are the gifts we often recall.
We’re blessed with this feeling, how love will surround us
Out of the Lord’s gift for us and for all.
We have just a few moments
When we touch other lives.
So let’s share all the wonder of love all around us:
And the magic of Christmas arrives.
Christmas and magic: words that we pair.
Christmas and magic: words that we share.
A child is smiling, a tree is glowing,
These are the gifts we often recall.
Yet nothing can match all the joys overflowing
Out of the Lord’s gift for us and for all.
Out of the Lord’s gift for us and for all.