The Making of "Caliban Does Christmas"
By Fraser Jackson
Shortly after joining the Caliban Quartet in January, 2005, Mathieu Lussier was brainstorming with us, coming up with ideas for future Caliban projects. He said “We should do a Christmas CD.” I agreed. Years earlier I had done an arrangement for bassoons and singer of the Tom Lehrer song “A Christmas Carol” so I knew that would work. I had also meant for years to arrange Leroy Anderson’s “Sleigh Ride”; here was a chance to do that, too.
As the idea began to grow and take shape in my mind, I remembered that Mary Lou Fallis was a big fan of Caliban and that we had agreed a long time ago to do a project together. Plus, she had just performed a Christmas show with the TSO on which she had sung Fred Silver’s “The 12 Days After Christmas”. I couldn’t hear most of the words because I was playing second bassoon but I heard the audience laughing so I knew that could work too. Mary Lou and I had lunch, she agreed to sing on the album and she came up with some great ideas, like singing “Too Fat for the Chimney” which she remembered from her childhood. It was also her idea to do an instrumental version of “The 12 Days of Christmas”.
As for other collaborators, Bonnie Brett was onside early on. Years earlier, Bonnie was working in a shoe store and Nadina bought some boots from her. They got along so well that Bonnie ended up singing at a party we had once for my father. We decided that one of these years, Caliban and Bonnie Brett would do a project together. This was it! Bonnie chose to sing two numbers, “Santa Claus is Coming to Town” and “In the Bleak Midwinter”. The former is based on a Peggy Lee version that Bonnie grew up with and knew like the back of her hand. The other was a hymn tune by Harold Darke, a setting of beautiful words by Christina Rossetti. Bonnie remembered this version vividly from her years in CBC-TV’s “Hymn Sing” and it really is a gorgeous setting of this poem.
Nadina had met Valdy in 2004 when he was the headline act at the conference of the Canadian Log Builders Association. She was there with her father, B. Allan Mackie, who was the keynote speaker (he’s a famous log-builder: www.ballanmackie.com). Valdy and Nadina hit it off and traded CD’s. In fact, Valdy liked her CD’s so much, he began playing them over the PA to his audiences during intermissions in his concerts! Nadina suggested that Valdy might like to sing on our Christmas CD and sure enough, he did! He was pretty open to suggestions for what to sing; I loved “The Secret of Christmas” from Ella Fitzgerald’s “Ella Wishes You a Swingin’ Christmas” and something told me Valdy would sound good on that. (I have to pat myself on the back for that one!!) Brian Barlow suggested something traditional and I’ve always liked “I Saw Three Ships” so that was that.
So how did a great jazz drummer and arranger like Brian Barlow get himself involved with a bassoon quartet anyway? We knew Brian well from his gig as the drummer for the Toronto Symphony Pops shows (he plays a fantastic “Flashdance” by the way…) and from studio work but I didn’t know he did any record producing. Nadina was on a gig with Brian in the fall and was playing a Boismortier duo with a student of hers during the break. Brian came over, listened for a while and then declared that that was a fantastic sound. Yes indeed! A few weeks later, he showed up at our house with a bassoon quartet arrangement of a Brazilian tune called “Dorian Dream”. We were surprised and delighted, and the arrangement sounded terrific. Then he showed up with a quartet version of the “Theme from Hockey Night in Canada”—one of my favourite tunes. This was uncalled for! And very cool! So, to make a long story short, Brian came onside as producer and arranger.
We now had a date, July 13, based on Valdy’s touring schedule, that had us recording Christmas music during the hottest part of the summer. Oh well— we made sure the studio was well air-conditioned. Brian suggested another jazz singer, Heather Bambrick, who he said had a great voice and a great sense of humour. The latter is a must for working with bassoons, as you probably realize. So Heather came into the picture. A former student of mine, Lisa Griffiths, made a special request that we record “What Are You Doing New Year’s Eve?” so I asked Heather to sing it and Heather came up with “Santa Baby” as the other number she wanted to sing.
I asked Alan Gasser to sing a Georgian Christmas tune. I knew it would be an unusual sound in the mix but Alan is a great guy and a lot of fun to work with. Besides, we needed some serious material to leaven the sweetness of so much humour and jazz. Alan was surprised and delighted and e-mailed me a few different versions of the “Alilo”, settling on the Megrelian version.
By now it was May and Brian and I were cranking out arrangements as quickly as we could. Which wasn’t very quickly since we were both swamped with other work. But the project was taking shape. Sidemen were hired and a schedule was worked out. It wasn’t big on rehearsal time but I hoped to keep the arrangements fairly easy to play. That was the plan, anyway. As it turned out, I was still finishing arrangements two days before the first rehearsal, even after hiring my TSO pal Mitch Clarke to arrange “Too Fat” and “The Same Christmas Cake”. And Valdy told us he had written a song, “Secret Santa”, but by the time of the first session, Brian still hadn’t seen the music to do an arrangement from. We remained calm.
I was excited, though. I had that feeling you get when you know a project is going well, going better than you had hoped. Guido Basso had joined the project a few weeks earlier and this was very exciting for us. I’ve been a big jazz fan for years and, in fact, I even managed to hear Boss Brass live at George’s once. So to be making a recording with Guido Basso was pretty darn amazing for me. Not to mention the fact that Brian had hired an absolutely top-notch rhythm section, including Scott Alexander whom I had heard many times when I was a student in Ottawa and he was a fixture of the jazz scene there.
The first session was on Saturday, July 11, and Friday turned out to be our only chance to rehearse. It was a busy day with Alan, Mary Lou, Bonnie and Brian dropping by at various times to try things out. It seemed like it was going to be OK. Our greatest regret was that Alan had biked over and had found fresh raspberries and bagels on the way but we actually didn’t have time to stop and enjoy them with him!
Saturday’s session was taken up entirely with Mary Lou’s material. She had a gig in New York’s Central Park on the Monday, so Saturday was her day. It all went smoothly enough. The technical team, Brian Barlow and Chad Irschick, wanted to put Mary Lou in the isolation booth, just so they could make her sound her absolute best by their twiddling of dials but she insisted on singing from the floor with us. I think the results are just fine and convey a degree of ensemble that can be difficult when the booth is used. The first day was a surprise for the Quartet in that we were unused to the pop studio style of recording. In the past, we had always recorded many takes of a piece or sections of a piece and the producer would then stitch together the best bits, making sure the end result still had life and continuity. But because this recording was being done in layers, with some performers recording their tracks on different days, we had to record two or three entire takes, choose the best one and move on. Occasionally we could “punch in” a short section if need be but generally, what you hear on the CD is virtually a live performance from the bassoon department. This took some getting used to and certainly raised our levels of concentration!
After the session on Saturday we hurried down to the University of Toronto for a photo shoot with Cylla von Tiedemann. She is a wonderful Toronto photographer who has done all our PR shots over the years. We had found an oak-panelled room with a fireplace at Hart House and scurried into our elf costumes. There were more than a few eyebrows raised by passersby although, of course, big city Toronto folks always try to make out as if there really isn’t anything special about two bald men in elf costumes prancing about in 30 degree weather with two women in slinky, sequined Santa outfits. Right. Needless to say, the photo shoot was Big Fun.
On Sunday, we drove three and a half hours out of Toronto and played a concert in Philipsville, Ontario, at a former church owned by our friend Paul Jenkins, harpsichordist of our Baroque alter-ego, Musica Franca. We played as much of our Christmas repertoire as we could and we were well-received by the audience. It really is refreshing to hear Sleigh Ride in the middle of the summer!
Monday July 13 was a big day. In the four hours, from 10:30 to 2:30, we had to record the rhythm section for five tunes, dub over the bassoons and have the five ready to go by the time Valdy showed up in the evening for his one session. It went well and we saved a bit of time by recording the bassoon tracks for “The Secret of Christmas” at the same time as the rhythm section tracks. Heather and Bonnie showed up to sing “guide tracks” which means that they sing the way they want their songs to go even though they’re going to re-record those tracks later. It’s to give the accompaniment a better idea of how it’s going to sound. As it turned out, Valdy’s flight had him arriving before the end of the first session which gave us time to relax with him before the evening session. This was also when we got to hear “Secret Santa” for the first time. I was excited to hear it because I loved it right away, and because I found out Valdy had gone to the same elementary school as I had in Ottawa. In any case, Valdy used the time to write out a lead sheet for “Secret Santa” and he and Nadina and I had a nice dinner together.
Monday evening was easy for the bassoons since we had already done our parts earlier and all we had to do was hang out in the control room and listen to Valdy. Not difficult at all! We went back to our house afterwards where Valdy was as happy as I was to find a beer waiting. He was off to his home on Salt Spring Island very early the next morning but he left a very nice note. What a good guy he is!
On Tuesday we had another session from 10:30 to 2:30 and recorded all our material with guitar, “Siberian Sleighride”, “Sleigh Ride”, and “Troika”. Difficult material but fun, of course. And it was refreshing to find that it was all new to our guitarist, the marvelous Mike “Pepe” Francis. It struck him that the Raymond Scott tune was a lot like bluegrass—something that hadn’t occurred to me before. The end of the session was taken up with Mike’s guitar solos for “I Saw Three Ships”, some of my favourite moments on the CD, I have to say.
On Tuesday evening we recorded two pieces that never made the final CD. Why, you ask? Good question. First we did Bonnie’s “In the Bleak Midwinter”. I had arranged it for four bassoons, contrabassoon and voice using some chords that Bonnie had come up with and using some of Harold Darke’s original harmonies as well. It is a very moving piece and I was fairly pleased with my arrangement, noticing that Bonnie and Brian had both teared up at the first hearing. It went well enough, with the five of us recording it and Nadina doing extra duty as Bassoon 4 in an overdub. Then we recorded a version of Morten Lauridsen’s gorgeous choral piece “O Magnum Mysterium”. Because of the harmonies involved, we had to record it as an octet, laying down parts 1,3 5, and 8 and then recording the rest on top. Both of these pieces were meant to provide a serious and spiritual tone to the recording, in the same way as the Georgian song.
Unfortunately, as I say, neither made it onto the CD. The publishers did not end up granting permission for the use of either, even after some serious begging and cajoling. This is a shame, of course, but as it turned out, the CD is long enough and works nicely as is.
On Wednesday, we recorded “The 12 Days of Christmas” minus several sound effects, of course. Many of the chicken and bird voices were done live from our chairs. We had some fun that day! That was an arrangement that I had a lot of fun creating during the July 1st long weekend, actually. I had to give some thought to how we were going to make the sound of a partridge since it doesn’t make a whole lot of noise apart from a thrumming sound that doesn’t lend itself to quick comedy. I settled on the “duck fart”, an effect that bassoonists know well. You block off the end of the bell with the palm of a hand, usually, and suck the air out of the bassoon at the reed end. Then if you remove your face from the reed quickly enough, the vacuum inside the bassoon pulls air through the reed and makes that little “duck fart” sound. Nadina did all those as overdubs using Mathieu’s hand for the seal.
Also on that session, we recorded “A Nutcracker Digest” and Mark Duggan did his overdubs on “Santa Claus is Coming to Town” and “Troika”.
We had a session scheduled for that evening but managed to move it up earlier so that Mathieu could get back to Montreal that night and see his two children whom he hadn’t seen for a week now. So the last pieces we recorded were “Megruli Alilo”, the bassoon tracks for “Marie-Noel” and “Theme from Hockey Night in Canada”. Alan Gasser arrived by bicycle. It was 32 degrees Celsius that day so he took a bit of time to recover from that. The engineers were just about knocked off their chairs by Alan who, like Mary Lou, sang with us on the floor and not from the isolation booth. Exciting stuff! Alan made a recording of his whole trip to the studio and his performance. I’m curious to hear that someday.
It was ironic that the last piece we recorded, “Hockey Night in Canada”, was the only piece on the CD that was just bassoon quartet with no additives or preservatives. And the very last thing on that session had Mathieu and I recording background vocals for “Too Fat for the Chimney”. That was very, very silly although Kathy thought that instead of “Fat, Fat, Fat” we should actually be singing “Flat, Flat Flat”. Oh, those comments from the peanut gallery… At the end of “Too Fat”, by the way, Mathieu says “Il est bien tros gros” which basically means “He’s way too fat!”
There was some celebrating that night and we sent Mathieu on his way back to Montreal.
On Thursday, Bonnie and Heather sang their “keeper” versions of their songs and Guido Basso came in to record his overdubs. Guido is like many great artists—humble, gentlemanly, full of good humour. I could tell he didn’t really know what to think when he arrived. He’s a good friend of Brian’s and was enthusiastic about taking part in the project but, still, a bassoon quartet is a pretty nerdy endeavour and jazz greats don’t usually do “nerdy”. I am happy to say that he was so delighted, he actually missed an entry because he was smiling too much to play. And he has since become a big fan of our “swingin’ sticks”. Also on hand that day were Alain Trudel and Guy Few. Guy lives about an hour west of Toronto but got stuck in a terrible traffic jam on the 401 and only just made it in time to record “Marie-Noel” with Alain.
At this point, we had a few things left to record and scheduled another session for the following Monday. We were not happy with the bassoon tracks for “Marie-Noel” so Kathy, Nadina and I re-recorded them on Monday, with Nadina filling in for Mathieu.
The big surprise was the arrangement Brian had come up with for “Secret Santa”. He had the lead sheet that Valdy had written out and remembered enough from hearing it to put together a neat little chart for the forces at hand: Nadina, Kathy, Alain Trudel, and myself on contrabassoon. Alain had spent the weekend performing in Parry Sound, Ontario, with The Festival of the Sound and was able to spend some time with us before taking a train to Montreal. We had a blast with Brian’s arrangement and I was only sorry that my playing on the album had come to an end! Guy Few came back that day and he and Alain recorded some background lyrics for “Too Fat” adding some quality to the enthusiasm that Mathieu and I had already immortalized. I was confident that they would sound great since they both have excellent singing voices and they both have perfect pitch. The trouble was, I had given them an early version of the lead sheet for “Too Fat”. It was in the key of G but we ended up doing the song in the key of D, so the notes they had rehearsed were not the ones they ended up singing! I felt very chagrined. Not having perfect pitch myself, I just hadn’t noticed the difference. Normally perfect pitch is an advantage but not in this case. Anyway, they persevered (Alain read it in some obscure clef just so it would make sense for him) and suddenly the CD was recorded.
Well, not quite. Brian had to record a number of percussion moments, especially in “The 12 Days of Christmas”. We fit in all those sorts of things over the next 6 weeks when the mixing sessions happened. In this style of recording, this process is critical, when the various tracks are balanced, enhanced, and when some material is even moved around in time so that the overall effect is as tight and communicative as possible. Chad Irschick is a great virtuoso when it comes to all this. These sessions, for the most part, included Brian, Chad and myself and they were a great learning experience for me. Brian and Chad have many, many years of this under their belts and it was a real pleasure to see them work their magic on our material. In fact, I was sorry when the last session was over.
We had a lot of fun with “12 Days” as you can imagine. It’s the track that took, by far, the most time in the studio. The difficult thing with comedy is that you can easily lose perspective and forget that something is funny after hearing it 137 times. It was certainly a relief to play “12 Days” for new ears and find out that it was still funny.
Chad worked very, very hard on this album and the results really show it. I think he has produced some absolutely wonderful textures and moods that are quite unique.
With any Caliban CD, there is always the difficulty of figuring out who you’re actually listening to. Unlike some groups, we always share the lead so that within a piece you will hear the lead change from one player to another quite frequently. We feel this makes for more colour variety for the listener and more challenges and engagement for the players. If it helps you to hear, we were seated in this order, from left to right: Kathleen, Fraser, Mathieu, Nadina. I’m the only one playing contra, so it’s easy to hear me but I’ve identified some highlights of each of us on bassoon, just so you can get a sense of the different voices:
Kathleen: “A Nutcracker Digest” 2:18-2:42; “Secret of Christmas” 1:30-1:56
Fraser: “Siberian Sleighride” 1:23-1:29 & 1:58-2:04; “Troika” 2:00-2:13
Mathieu: “New Year’s Eve?” 1:34-1:42; “Troika” 2:16-2:29 (that’s also Mathieu playing beautifully together with Nadina from 0:20 to 0:33 of “Nutcracker”)
Nadina: Opening of “A Nutcracker Digest”; ‘The Secret of Christmas” 1:11-1:30 & 3:00-3:10; “Marie-Noël” opening and first solo
So there’s the basic story of how we recorded this CD. I’m not sure I’ve ever had as much fun with a bassoon in my hand. Everyone on the project had many smiles and laughs in the process and I hope you get a sense of that as a listener. And if ever a summer heat wave is getting you down, go for a drive in an air-conditioned pick-up truck with this CD cranked on full volume. It sure worked for me!
