Transcript for the Piece Audio version of 'Tis the Season

'Tis the Season!

(Beach Boys Christmas song)
Whether it's the Beachboys doing a rock and roll Christmas song, or a traditional hymn many people say Christmas just wouldn’t be the same without the music. It can be classical, popular, jazz, or world music. We just get a feeling of comfort, or spiritual uplift from holiday music. I'm Sarah McConnell and today on With Good Reason we invited some past guests to share their favorite songs with us and why the music resonates with them this time of year.

[music fades out}

Today on With Good Reason, we invited some past guests to share their favorite and why the music resonates with them this time of year.

I’m joined in the studio by Elliot Majerczyk, With Good Reason’s associate producer.

Sarah: The first person you spoke to was Tim Seibles. He’s a poet and a professor of English at Old Dominion University.

Elliot: Tim is also a lover of all sorts of American music. So he picked an old blues standard "Please Send Me Someone to Love" as his choice. It reminded him of time of not by choice solitude of a Christmas past.

TIM SEIBLES INTERVIEW

Sarah: That was a lot of fun Elliot. Who did you speak to next?

Elliot: Lisa-Edwards Burrs is a professor of music Virginia State University. When she appeared on our show she spoke of the contributions of African American composers in the world of classical music.

Sarah: She's an accomplished soprano singer herself.

Elliot: Yes. So I think it was natural that chose a traditional hymn sung by one of the great operatic voices of all time, Leontyne Price.

LISA EDWARDS BURRS INTERVIEW

Sarah: Your next guest is John Guthmiller a professor of music and conductor at Virginia Commonwealth University. I remember speaking to him about conducting an orchestra in China composed of both western and Chinese musicians.

Elliot: I think that was for the 2008 Bejing Olympics. John chose a Christmas Carol called "In the Bleak Midwinter" written by the English Poet Christina Rossetti in 1872. Though this carol was voted the best Christmas Carol in a poll of some of the world's leading choirmasters, beating out Silent Night, it still remains relatively unknown to the public.

JOHN GUTHMILLER INTERVIEW

Sarah: That carol really evokes this time of year.

Elliot: You can almost feel the cold wintery night and silence down below that accompanies it.

Sarah: We're going to the other side of the world for our next piece.

Elliot: Well as we heard Christmas music has a deep spiritual resonance for a lot of people. Anne Rasmussen is a music professor at the College of William and Mary and also performs Middle Eastern music herself.

ANNE RASMUSSEN INTERVIEW

ELLIOT MAJERCZYK INTERVIEW

Thank you Elliot for sharing this music with us. I hope you and your family have a wonderful holiday.

Thank you, Sarah, and all the best to our listeners.

Support for With Good Reason is provided by the C&O Restaurant in Charlottesville, open nightly and offering fine dining since 1976. Holiday gift certificates and catering are available. Further information at 434-971-7044, or on the web at C-and-O-restaurant.com.

You're listening to With Good Reason. Elliot Majerczyk composed and performed the closing music for this show. Elliot and Jesse Dukes are our associate producers. Andrew Wyndham is our executive producer. Nancy King creates our feature capsules. Jeannie Palin handles listener services and Lydia Wilson is our publicity coordinator. We had help this week from Perry Smith, Peter Solomon, and Kevin Heraldo. With Good Reason is produced by the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities. For a free copy of this show on CD, call 877-451-5098. I'm Sarah McConnell, Thanks for listening.

Back