EMILY SANDERS, CHRIS PARKINSON, PETE MORTON - The Magical Christmas Tree
Fellside Recordings FECD279
This is not your average Christmas album. If you are looking for shades of Bing Crosby with a folky slant, look elsewhere. Pete Morton and Chris Parkinson’s The Magical Christmas Tree tour has been running for around 10 years, initially with Roger Wilson, then Tom Moore, followed by four years with Maggie Boyle. Emily Sanders now completes the trio, adding her vocal talents and fiddle to the mix. This CD features songs and tunes from the current show repertoire and although it contains a couple of songs and tunes with a strong Christmas association, it would be best described as a winter themed album.
Various singers have tackled In The Bleak Midwinter, including Barbara Dickson, and the simple version on this album, sung by Pete Morton, is up there with the best of them. Some albums are worth the money for one track alone and my personal highlight, The Snows Of Winter Fall, written by Graeme Miles and also sung by Pete Morton, falls into this category.
The accompaniments are impeccable throughout with some lovely interplay between box and fiddle. Chris Parkinson takes the vocal lead on The Beggar and adds a strong bass vocal line to several of the other tracks. Production values are high with a great natural acoustic sound, just what we have come to expect from a Fellside release. The recording is dedicated to the memory of Maggie Boyle and on the basis of this album, I want to see the show. You can’t get a better recommendation than that.
I hope that some of these songs get other outings. To paraphrase a well-known charity appeal, “This CD is for life, not just for Christmas”.
www.fellside.com
Pete Heywood
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this CD online from The Listening Post The Listening Post is the CD mailorder service of The Living Tradition magazine. This album was reviewed in Issue 116 of The Living Tradition magazine. |