The concert is coming, the concert is coming. Santa, help bring baskets of cats and kittens to Purchase on Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Loving me some Wilco, Strayhorn, Radiohead, Feist, Goat Rodeo and Ryan Adams, Stravinsky always and man oh man!!!

Come one come all. Come one come all. Never assume we will let up in our pursuit of musical epiphanies. Never assume that William The Angel will just grab himself a turkey sandwich with a little mustard and sit by the side of the road playing Jingle Bells Blues while watching the clock. No No No No No No No No No!!! How many Christmas/Chanukah/Holiday seasons do we get in one life? As my friend Ian Cron said to me this year, “It seems Rob that your life is spent watering other people’s musical gardens and some pretty damned important people. What a magnificent job.” HELL YES!! (excuse the language). What a year it’s been (you can read the blogs). BUT…. the Christmas Concert is where I get to make music on my own and with all my illustrious Manhattanite geniuses, Will Lee and the rest. I have spent an inordinate amount of time working on this years event, arranging the music and tweaking things, changing old arrangements and just trying on new things for size. You never know when the Concert will come to an end. I know that next year will be a year where I am asked to take on the musical supervision of another project for Sting that will have me far away during the Winter and I know that I will be spending more time in DC after the Kennedy Center Honors because of a possible extended Holiday television project there. Will there NOT be a Rob Mathes 19th Annual Christmas Concert??? I would certainly hope there will be but I go passionately into all of these because they all seem somehow precious.

I appreciate the support of the audience every year and we sweat every seat sold. I still have to call out the troops in the last week and say, “Come on down!!” I got the ticket sales info today and as with every year we have sold a ton of tickets but there are many seats still available and Friday night is the night that has the most available good seats because people assume that is the toughest one to get to because of rush hour traffic and that is the first concert etc etc. All of them will be special in their own way. The first concert has an opening night energy and intensity which is cool.

I always feel odd pushing at people to do this or that. Musicians are hermits. So many of US stay in our corners and never go out. We listen to our iPods and act like vampires and yet when WE do a gig we want everyone to drop everything and come. This concert has been a tradition for so many for so long and I know that is because of the lyrics behind the original songs and the music made onstage. No one needs a new arrangement of “Angels We Have Heard On High” though. Too many Holiday concerts center around cute arrangements. Not this one in my mind. No one needs treacle. Everyone needs to be uplifted at this time of year though. I went to the choir rehearsal tired on Sunday and was greeted by 40 people who sang so beautifully and it immediately transformed me. I will hear 6 extraordinary Horn players play my Strayhorn like version of the “Dreidel Song” (yep, I threw out my Brubeck version because it wasn’t good enough, this one kicks tail, much better and swings like a mo) and it will transform me. I will hear the great sax player Tim Ries who plays with Mick Jagger and Keith Richards for a living but also plays with Maria Schneider’s Big Band play a solo on that and it will be MY Christmas. My daughter Emma will sing Starbright with me and that will lift me up. Joe Bonadio will play a middle eastern Drum with me while we do a quasi Bruce Cockburn meets Thom Yorke version of “We Three Kings”. We’ll play “What Do I Find There” for the first time in a long time and D-Train will sing 4 solo pieces, easily one of the great Gospel/RnB voices we have period, full stop.

I put this concert up there as one of the things to see if you want to be brought into the season in this area. You will not find a deeper pool of great musical talent with the people I am blessed enough to have with me every year. Come one, come all. There are still tickets available. IF THE SITE SAYS IT’S SOLD OUT, THE WEBSITE IS LYING There are lots of seats and we are at the intimate Pepsico Theatre where every seat is good!!! :0)
Friday, December 16th at 8pm, Saturday, December 17th at 8pm, Sunday, December 18th at 3pm at The Pepsico Theatre of Performing Arts Center at SUNY Purchase College
Call the Music Source and talk to T.D. Ellis, 203-698-0444. Try www.artscenter.org or 914-251-6200.

You should be able to get tickets through one of those three ways. I am loving the new Wilco, the new Feist and still digging on Separator and Supercollider and Morning Mr. Magpie off King Of Limbs big time (Radiohead). I am looking for some new music but by new music, I mean NEW music. That is not easy. Hope to see you on the weekend. Rob

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