Do You Hear What They Hear? : What’s Cool for the Yule

“The Peace Album.” Paul Horn. Kuckuck 11083-2 (Celestial Harmonies, Box 30122, Tucson, Ariz. 85751).

The Christmas season and the art of music have too often been tied together by contrivances of dubious value. Jazz versions of yuletide songs are no longer a novelty, though in the past they produced some engaging results. Paul Horn’s album is an extraordinary example of Christmas as a point of departure that is unique from every standpoint--conception, repertoire, execution.

Recorded in a studio in Brisbane, Calif., it is a one-man performance, with Paul multitracking parts on flute, alto flute, bass flute, and using a multivider that splits tones into several different notes. Several centuries are spanned, from Gregorian chants to Palestrina, a J.S. Bach air, Handel, Schubert, and some of the customary seasonal songs--”Silent Night,” “The Lord’s Prayer,” “We Three Kings.”

The arrangements are sublime, serene, soaring, caressing and, indeed, peaceful, using canon forms, harmony and counterpoint with the sense of innate taste that has always been associated with Horn. Unlike all those trivial tributes to red-nosed reindeer, this is an album that will be played for endless pleasure at any reason. ****.

“A GRP Christmas Collection.” Various artists. GRP GRD 9574.

In utter contrast, here is an album that’s everything the Horn set is not. It is as though the producer were saying: “Have yourself a sentimental Christmas: trite, banal and bland.” There are some pleasant moments: Diane Schuur at her unaffected best in “The Christmas Song,” Eddie Daniels playing “Sleigh Ride” and the cuts by Gary Burton and Lee Ritenour. For the most part, the GRP roster of artists contributes poppified or fusionized versions of overworked works. Don’t expect to hear a note of this from Dec. 26 forward. **.

“The Christmas Collection.” Various artists. Prestige OJC 6011.

Mel Torme may be delighted with this album, since three of the artists happen to play his “Christmas Song.” On the other hand, he may not, since none of them (Dexter Gordon, Lockjaw Davis, Gene Ammons) does justice to his subtly brilliant melody. In fact, it’s hard to think of a non-mercenary reason for putting together a collection of this kind; there are good moments scattered throughout, notably clarinetist Bill Smith’s “Greensleeves,” but for the better cuts you have to put up with an organ tribute to that red-nosed reindeer. ** 1/2.

“In a Christmas Mood.” The Starlight Orchestra. Mobile Fidelity MFCD 796.

As the notes make clear, this is an attempt to recapture the Glenn Miller sound without using the Miller name (proscribed by the maestro’s estate, which still reserves it for the currently touring official Glenn Miller orchestra).

Given a group of capable studio musicians, it is not difficult to duplicate the particular blend and arranging style that established Miller as the dominant figure of the circa 1940 pop-swing era. Here are 23 songs (some in medleys) with the long familiar clarinet-lead-over-saxes, the occasional vocal, the state-of-the-art sound. A co-producer and co-arranger for this production was John LaBarbera, a trumpeter who from 1968-71 played in the actual Glenn Miller orchestra, when Buddy De Franco was its leader. LaBarbera was born in 1945, a year after Miller died.

The Starlight Orchestra will decorate the winter wonderland to the tune of **** stars for anyone in the Miller mood or mode.

Meet Me at Jim & Andy’s.” By Gene Lees (Oxford University Press, $18.95, 265 pp.).

Ponderous scholarly treatises aside, there are five requisites for a readable and valuable book on jazz: enthusiasm, insight, compassion, wit and technical knowledge of the music.

Gene Lees has them all. The Canadian-born, Ojai-based writer and lyricist (“Waltz for Debby,” “Quiet Nights”) has a deep love for the music and musicians he discusses in this collection of essays (from his monthly “Jazzletter”). His chapters on Art Farmer, Paul Desmond and Dr. Billy Taylor leave no doubt about this.

His insight into the personalities of his subjects is manifested in the essays about the enigmatic Duke Ellington, the bassist-turned-painter John Heard and the tragic Frank Rosolino, who took his own life. Lees’ compassion is no less evident in the sensitive Woody Herman chapter, and in the story of the Gerry Mulligan-Judy Holliday romance.

His sense of humor protects him from the pomp that dominates too much jazz writing. An introduction recounts the wild story of Blind Orange Adams, a fictional character who existed only in a series of news items by Lees and other Down Beat editors around 1960, and who seemed so real to readers that a New York record company actually asked Lees to arrange a record session.

As for the fifth dimension, Lees can tell you how a flat ninth works with a dominant chord, in case you need to know. More significantly, his eminently readable essays bring into sharp focus the characters, life styles and artistry of a dozen men whose lives have intersected with his own.

The title (a reference to a New York bar patronized by jazzmen in the 1960s) is too esoteric; the subtitle, “Jazz Musicians and Their World,” is closer to the core. “Meet Me at Jim & Andy’s” is an ideal gift book.

“Satchmo.” By Gary Giddins (Doubleday, $24.95, 239 pp.)

Produced by Toby Byron, this is as much a picture book as a text--understandably, since the Armstrong story has been endlessly retold. Along with the familiar anecdotes, however, Giddins does come up with some new information, most remarkably that Satchmo was the object of an FBI investigation. There are also excerpts from posthumously discovered writings by Armstrong, who along with his lifelong love for marijuana was an early typewriter addict. Visually, this is a superb production; many of the photos, or letters from Louis (the latter will require use of a magnifying glass) have never been published before. This may look like just another coffee table book, but both the words and the illustrations lend it historical value.