Author: mister ebby

O Holy Night: The Good, The Bad, and the Bombastic

“O Holy Night” is one of those carols that is unavoidable in the run up to Christmas, and it certainly is one of the most beautiful of the most popular carols. My own favourite for many years has been “In The Bleak Midwinter” – Both different settings, by Gustav Holst and by Harold Darke, have their own beauty, but Darke’s is definitely a nicer setting of that text in my opinion. Just listen to it:

But, the potential to show off vocally seems to draw singers to “O Holy Night”. When I was in university, there was fierce competition to get chosen as one of the soloists for that carol at the annual carol services. These carol services were one of the highlights of the university calendar, and while I was there a CD was recorded of the choral performances which I still pull out every year to listen to. For my final year in uni, I was one of the tenors chosen to sing the solo, though I’ve never trained as a classical singer. I’ve loved that carol since I was a child, and I’ve been hearing it every year in the local church choir that my dad sings with.

Perhaps it’s this early exposure that has defined my taste around this piece of music, as that soprano has a beautifully clear, baroque-style soprano voice, and to this day I prefer to hear “O Holy Night” sung by such a soprano voice, or by a young soprano chorister. There’s something about that melody being sung by such a clear voice that makes the carol even more effective than 5 minutes of bombastic vocal virtuosity. This version from the King College Choir of Cambridge, arranged by John Rutter is as lovely as you’d imagine, but just makes me wish there was a soloist along with that gorgeous choir. The second soloist in this video has a particularly gorgeous tone:

One year around this time, myself and some friends spent a very long evening youtubing loads of different versions of this carol – something we’ve also done with The Star-Spangled Banner. Try it some time, and you’ll pass through bewilderment, admiration, and sheer hilarity as you journey through the multiple different versions you can find. It was on one such youtube crawl that we came across the most bombastic version of “O Holy Night” that I’ve heard yet. If Disney did fervent christian christmas carols and got Celine Dion to sing the solos, it would still pale in terms of just how over-the-top this arrangement gets. It’s also oddly one of my favourites as a result – if you’re going for bombast, you really have to go full throttle.

Trust me, if you listen to no other video I post, you should listen to this. It’s like each line was arranged individually, separate from the rest. The opening sounds like the most epic film score ever, and then it just gets more overblown. It makes me so happy that someone managed to this overwrought a version of this carol. It’s alternately astounds me, and makes me laugh uncontrollably. The musical arrangement is astonishing. There’s even a mid-verse key change. Beat that X-Factor. I just have no words. It’s either the greatest, or the worst version of this carol ever recorded. But it’s definitely the most bombastic.

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post-launch gigs roundup

Firstly, thanks so much to everyone who turned out on the wet, windy night in Galway last Wednesday, and everyone who showed up in Dublin on Thursday for the gig in the gorgeous, intimate venue upstairs in Twisted Pepper. It brought a smile to my face to see so many familiar and unfamiliar faces coming out to help celebrate the album getting out into the world.

Secondly, thank you to “The Meadhbhs” and “The Sullivans” for adding their voices to the shows. I named the two little groups after Meadhbh Sullivan, who provides most of the additional vocals on the album, but unfortunately wasn’t able to be a part of the launch gigs due to a show she is acting in this week in Cork. (It’s in The Granary in Cork all this week. Go see it.)

The Meadhbhs (Galway choir): Deirbhile Ni Bhrolchain, Elise Karlsson, Fionnuala Connolly, Kevin Brett.

The Sullivans (Dublin choir): Jo McNamarra, Dearbhla Kelly, Sally O’Dunlaigh.

That idea worked out pretty well. I had one rehearsal with each group before the show, and I’d emailed them the parts and the tracks they were singing, and I was just hoping that it would come together pretty easily. But it really did, and they added so much to the songs they were singing on.

The album got a little mention in The Ticket section of The Irish Times today, and yesterday on Jim Carroll’s “On The Record” blog too, which was rather lovely to see, to be honest. I nicked a copy of The Ticket from a café today after I spotted it.

Little mention in the Irish Times.

Today my album went live on iTunes

I’m not gonna lie – that brought a big smile to my face. It’s about €1 more expensive than it is to buy it direct from Bandcamp, but iPhone users can download it direct to their phones through the iTunes store, if that’s something that you wanna do, whereas with Bandcamp, you do really need to be at your computer, and not on your phone, to download it.

If you are enjoying the record, and use iTunes, then please consider rating the album and writing a little review that people can read on the iTunes store page. That would make me very happy indeed.

There are delays with the physical CD, and it’s looking more and more like it won’t be ready for the actual launch days. But sure, I’ll still play the gigs and celebrate this album going out into the world. If you’re around Galway or Dublin next week, drop in and listen to me playing songs from this record live.

At each of the gigs, there’ll be a small little choir group singing with me for a few of the songs. It’s different people in each city, and they’re basically friends and acquaintances, and strangers and twitter followers, who all said yes when I asked if they’d like to sing with me. I’m really looking forward to getting them up on stage with me. It should be a lot of fun.

I’ll also be playing some songs that aren’t on the new album, which I held over for the next one, or which have been written since this summer. And I’ve reworked some of my favourite covers too.

Stream my album, and buy it if you like.

The digital version of my album went out to my fundit funders yesterday, and about half of them have already downloaded it at this stage. But you can now stream the album on Bandcamp or Soundcloud, and if you like, you can buy it from Bandcamp. It will shortly be available through iTunes and other digital stores over time.

Bandcamp is my own preferred digital retailer, as quite honestly, I get to charge you less for the album, and I make more money directly as it’s not going through a middle man of any kind.

The CD itself has had another little setback – I’m starting to take it as a hint that CDs maybe aren’t the way forward. The designer’s computer had a hard drive failure yesterday, and I’m not sure if he’s been able to retrieve any of the work that has been lost. Here’s hoping that he can.

Talking about fundit some more

Damien Mulley is blogging about :fund:it at the moment by way of three interviews with people who used the site to fund their different creative projects. I was one of those three who was interviewed by him – he emailed over a few questions about my fundit campaign back in August shortly after the campaign finished.

The first interview with Philly McMahon of thisispopbaby went up on his site yesterday, and the one with me went up today.

I remember my replies being a complete and utter brain dump, as my project wasn’t long finished when he emailed me, so everything was still in my head. If I was asked now, I’d probably be a bit more succinct on the whole. Well, maybe not.

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