Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas!

More Songs for Christmas

More songs for Christmas!

Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas

(extract from cover of the Sam Smith single; amazon.com)

Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas

Very popular Christmas song.

Memorable melody and catchy chord progression.

Written by Hugh Martin and Ralph Blane in 1943.

Introduced by Judy Garland in the movie Meet Me in St Louis (1944).
Note the evolution of orchestration, reharmonization and arrangement style over the years.

Circle of fifths harmony provides many opportunities for reharmonization and lush orchestration.

Wikipedia entry here.

Flight of the Bumble Bee

Flight of the Bumble Bee
(1899-1900)

by Russian composer Rimsky Korsakov
Originally an orchestral interlude for the opera The Tale of Tsar Saltan.
Now popular as a stand-alone virtuoso piece for piano.
Also transcribed for other instruments. 
Characterized by torrents of cascading chromatic semiquavers,
representative of a buzzing bumble bee.
See Wikipedia entry here for details and background.

My Favourite Things

My Favourite Things

Classic song from the broadway musical (1959)
and movie (1965) The Sound of Music.

Composed by Rodgers and Hammerstein.

Popular for jazz improvisations

because of its circle-of-fifths structure.

Wiki link here.

More Samba! (One Note Samba, I Go To Rio, Mas Que Nada)

This post is in conjunction with the Rio Olympics 2016.

(Ambigram of Rio2016 Olympics logo from 

https://twitter.com/hypergeometricx/status/765473293126111232)

In the spirit of the Rio Olympics, 
here are more catchy sambas,
in addition to the previous post on Aquarela do Brasil.

Enjoy!

Brazil - Aquarela do Brasil

This post is in conjunction with the Rio Olympics 2016.

Aquarela do Brasil (1939)
(Watercolours of Brazil)

Jazz Standard. 

A lively Samba.

One of the most famous Brazilian songs. 

Composed by Ary Barroso. 

First sung by Francisco Alves.

Wiki link here .