CD Recommendation
Winter Solstice by John McCutcheon
By Gail Reynolds
December’s Old Time Music radio show, which airs each first Saturday of the month on noncommercial WMNF radio, 88.5 FM, closed with a poignant Christmas song, a favorite of mine from John McCutcheon’s Winter Solstice CD.
McCutcheon is a multitalented singer/songwriter who is also a renown hammered dulcimer artist. This instrument imbues his seasonal CD with an celestial quality,as exemplified here:
The song in question, “Christmas in the Trenches, ” is also featured on his Live at Wolf Trap CD in which he notes that some songs seem to write themselves as was the case of his musical account of one of many purported spontaneous Christmas truces between German and British soldiers at Christmas time during W.W.I. In the season of hope and peace it’s encouraging to think of enemies being able to connect by singing “Stille Nacht” or ‘Silent Night.”
Sainsbury, a grocery chain in the U.K., presented a “Christmas in the Trenches” theme in its annual Christmas commercial. It is absolutely stunning!
I love music and I love to write, so Rock at Night is a perfect forum for me.I appreciate all genres from classical to country and am astounded by the number of extraordinarily talented but under-recognizedmusical artists. So my articles often feature such “well known unknown” musicians and composers.
Before email, I would include a record review along with my holiday greetings as an alternative to annual reports of personal achievements and acquisitions. Among these, I wrote of Leonard Cohen’s I’m Your Man in 1988 and Bruce Cockburn’s Nothing But A Burning Light in 1991, urging my friends and family to listen to these masterpieces.
Now I can continue to express my enthusiasm for various musical artists to a wider audience.
- Album Review: Craig Chee and Sarah Maisel’s ‘Christmas Island’ - December 19, 2019
- Free For All: community supported high quality music - September 29, 2019
- Album Review: John Prine’s ‘The Tree of Forgiveness’ - February 9, 2019
