River Raisin Ragtime Revue releases first Christmas album
TECUMSEH — Christmas music season is here, and, while there is a wide variety of recordings of seasonal music to play at parties or while baking cookies and candies, sometimes the same old tunes get a little overplayed.
For anyone looking for something different yet familiar in the way of Christmas carols and hymns, the River Raisin Ragtime Revue has a new album that fits the bill.
“A Ragtime Christmas” is R4’s ninth album and is available now from Apple Music and iTunes, Spotify, and Amazon Music. CDs are $20 can be ordered from R4’s website, ragtimeband.org/r4-store.
“What we wanted to do is we wanted our listeners to have something that they could basically hum along with, be really familiar with, but then treat it in a true ragtime form,” William Pemberton, co-founder and executive director of R4, said.
Lenawee County-area music fans will be able to hear tunes from "A Ragtime Christmas” at the ensemble’s first Christmas concert at 4 p.m. Dec. 10 at Adrian High School’s Julianne and George Argyros Performing Arts Center. Ryan Cupp, director of bands at Adrian College, will conduct. Joining R4 will be the Adrian High School Balladiers with director Steven Antalek.
Tickets are $20 general admission or $10 for youth 18 and younger. Tickets will be available at the door or in advance at ragtimeband.org/calendar.
Songs from the album also will get some radio play, Pemberton said. WLEN 103.9 FM in Adrian is expected to work them into its holiday playlist, and public radio WRCJ 90.9 FM, Detroit's major classical and jazz station, will be highlighting the CD during the Giving Tuesday fundraiser on Nov. 28 and will be "promoting the heck out of it" through the holiday season, Pemberton said.
“We're super excited about that!” he said in an email.
The album has 10 tracks, opening with “Jingle Bells” and continuing with “White Christmas,” “Joy to the World,” “Jolly Old St. Nicholas,” “Little Drummer Boy,” “Silver Bells,” “Rudolph and Frosty,” “Ukrainian Bell Carol,” “Silent Night” and “We Wish You a Merry Christmas.”
R4’s music director emeritus, William Hayes, took the original tunes and added ragtime elements to them, Pemberton said.
“You'll hear the original theme stated and it will be in a ragtime rhythmic, it'll be in the ragtime genre, and you'll hear the ragtime syncopation,” Pemberton said in an interview. "But then what he'll do to develop it into a true rag, he has related themes that he's written, so it'll go into a B section or a C section developed out and then he'll return to that original theme.”
On slower pieces, like “Silent Night” and “Little Drummer Boy,” Hayes took a different approach. “Silent Night” has a slow, cakewalk-like rhythm driving throughout. “Little Drummer Boy” uses a habanera tango feel that was popular during the ragtime era of the early 1900s.
To help introduce R4’s fans to the Christmas tunes, they shot videos of the recording process at Grammy-winning Brookwood Studio in Plymouth. Six videos are on R4’s YouTube channel, youtube.com/@RiverRaisinRagtimeRevue.
“We decked out the recording studio with Christmas,” Pemberton said, “where everybody's got green and red shirts on and Santa caps."
R4 has recorded other CDs at Brookwood, Pemberton said.
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Doing recordings is stressful, he said, but things were more relaxed this time.
“It was two, 2½-hour recording sessions — one in the morning, one in the early afternoon — with just a couple hours for the brass players to rest their chops in between, to lay it down,” Pemberton said. "It's a professional group. There was one rehearsal to put it together, all the charts. And they do a great job.”
“It was probably the easiest recording session that we've had,” he said. “I think it's because we've been through so many. It was fun music to play. I'm really happy with how it turned out.”
Proceeds from the album sales will go toward the renovations of Haviland Hall, the former Adrian Training School chapel, into R4’s new offices and performance venue. The chapel is on PlaneWave Instruments' campus on North Main Street in Adrian. Work on the exterior took place this summer and fall. Interior renovations will be next.
— Contact reporter David Panian at dpanian@lenconnect.com or follow him on X, formerly Twitter: @lenaweepanian.
This article originally appeared on The Daily Telegram: River Raisin Ragtime Revue releases first Christmas album
