Peter Curtis
Christmas with Your Jewish Boyfriend
Bella Barktalk Records
2019
The subtitle of this collection is "Christmas music by Jewish songwriters," which turns out to be almost no limitation on the repertoire. In fact it is an enormous percentage of the Christmas songbook, as the selections here demonstrate. Guitarist Peter Curtis came up with a clever album title, and he backs it up with excellent unaccompanied chord-melody style guitar performances, enlivening some potentially overplayed seasonal songs.
"Winter Wonderland" opens the set on electric guitar, an active bass line underlying the melody and solos. "White Christmas" switches to classical guitar, a bossa nova feel refreshing the familiar melody. Most of the selections are under three minutes long—some two minutes or less—so the program moves right along. "Let It Snow" brings the electric guitar back for a sprightly romp, and gives "Rockin' Around The Christmas Tree" a rockabilly groove.
"Silver Bells" and "Christmas Time Is Here" from pianist Vince Guaraldi's Peanuts TV music feature pitch bending on the melody that could only come from either a pedal steel guitar or a guitar with a B-Bender installed. Either way, they provide an additional timbre to the program. On the title tune Curtis sings his humorous ode to interfaith holiday celebration ("On Christmas Day, I like to eat moo shu").