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Christmas Carols in Palm Beach

In December, returning to Florida for the winter season, I took a brief trip to visit one of my Toronto friends who had bought a house in Naples. I remembered how late one night in 2006 I had narrowly escaped from two particularly sinister-looking men, while returning to Miami along Alligator Alley, the long connecting freeway between Naples and Fort Lauderdale. I had pulled up to consult a map when the two walked over to my car. I presumed they were highway patrol officers and carelessly rolled down my window. They had given me one of the worst scares of my life. This time, I remembered to travel only in the daytime.

To me, Naples lacked the international feel of Palm Beach, and I was glad to have chosen my little island instead. Once I was back home, Aubrey, my happy-go lucky handyman, took me shopping, brought me fresh coconuts, and helped with some of the maintenance chores that owning a house entails.

When I picked up my guitar again, I realized that Toronto had no theme song of its own, as do San Francisco, New York, and Chicago, and I decided to write one, naming it simply “The Toronto Song.” I combined an upbeat rhythm with a catchy melody and was able to incorporate most of the city’s colourful landmarks as well as a little of its history, its festivals, and our multicultural human mosaic. I played an early demo to John Tory, not realizing that in future he would become the mayor of our city, and he offered the good suggestion that I add the three boroughs to the lyrics. Later in the year, when back in Toronto, I recorded a simple music video filmed by George Tsioutsioulas so that people could enjoy the song on YouTube. We incorporated live footage from my performance at the Taste of the Danforth Festival as well as some aerial shots provided by Ontario Tourism. It made me happy that I had once again stumbled on a unique idea, a musical offering to the city where my career had begun.

I continued composing material for a new Christmas album that was in the works and made an arrangement of the beautiful carol “O Holy Night,” originally written in 1847. On one of my evening walks I had the idea to add an original “intro” and “outro,” using a few lines I had written in Spanish. Michael eventually recorded layered vocals beneath my opening guitar arpeggios, which Peter stacked to create a hauntingly beautiful monk-like effect. I had to hit a high E, which was fine for recording, but I am not sure I would ever be brave enough to risk this piece live! Michael made excellent guitar arrangements of “We Three Kings” and “God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen,” and I wrote an evocative and cinematic piece I called “Christmas Through the Looking Glass.” We included Michael’s duo arrangement of Catalan folk melodies, and I added “El Noy de la Mare,” a lovely carol from Catalonia that many years ago I had arranged and played on my Miniatures for Guitar album. Peter recorded our performance live as this simple guitar duet needed no backing tracks. As I wrote in my first book, Chopin was once quoted as saying, “Nothing is more beautiful than a guitar … save perhaps two.”

My idea for several other familiar carols, which were pretty skimpy on melodic material, was to write original music and weave it into the best-known Christmas melodies. Sitting on my living room couch, I wrote “Fantasy on Oh Little Town of Bethlehem,” and an original piece using “Good King Wenceslas” that actually only quotes seven notes from the famous English carol before veering off into a soulful, romantic melody plucked simply from my imagination. I loved creating new themes out of the blue and developing them little by little, occasionally adding hints from other carols such as my brief reference to “O Tannenbaum” in “Alone on Christmas Day.” Sometimes I combined two songs, as I did with “The Huron Carol” and “Coventry Carol.” It always seemed a miracle to me that I could come up with completely original melodies, and I remain convinced that if I had the time and opportunity to just sit still and write beautiful melodies, I could compose several a day. I remember telling this to my former husband, Jack, but the realities of life do not allow for this indulgence, and sometimes I think to myself, Does the world really need another melody or lyric? I consider myself to be a non-ego-driven realist, so the answer is obviously “no,” yet writing original music has always been an immensely satisfying part of my career.

I am an instinctive composer and believe that my lack of any advanced compositional training actually works with, rather than against, my creativity. I know that my producer and collaborator, Peter, composes his unique arrangements in the same way. For him it is usually trial and error, experimenting with different sounds, combinations of sounds, blends of traditional instruments, and more abstract sounds and reverbs that are not always part of the standard orchestral palette. We both let ourselves be guided by the emotional attraction of certain notes and harmonies, and thus we often break the traditional rules. But that is precisely when the unexpected magic can happen. Several great film composers, such as Hans Zimmer and Vangelis, create their amazing music in spite of having had no formal training, and it is also well known that Irving Berlin, who wrote hit after hit, could not read or write a single note!

In May I also wrote, of all things, a sports anthem called “For the Love of the Game,” for which I hired Carl Dixon to record vocals. I had hopes of getting it into the Pan Am Games, but without strong connections to the organizers of such an event, I was unsuccessful, so it remains in my collection of unreleased songs.