We Wish You a Merry Jazzed Up Christmas

We Wish You A Merry Jazzed-Up Christmas was first written in 2002 for an open air carol service in Altrincham, Cheshire. It underwent a number of further revisions in the following years, becoming very popular at Altrincham Boys’ Grammar School with both performers and audience alike. It was played at school concerts and also at the end of a carol service, where it was supposed to be used as exit music, but when we finished playing it, all the boys were still sat in their places, as they had been enjoying the music so much!

It has also been played by adult groups too, notably the brass quintet from the Wilmslow Symphony Orchestra and a brass ensemble specially assembled to accompany carol singing in the Cheshire village of Handforth on Christmas Eve. From there, I have gone on to arrange it for brass band (premiered in December 2014), and there are plans to arrange it for orchestra for performance in December 2015. I believe it would also score well for big band, as well as many different quartet or quintet groupings – it is a very versatile piece of music.

The tuba solo was not part of the original performance, but was added in during the revision process, when I taught a very gifted tuba player and decided to extend the piece by writing a solo for him. The tuba player has a very important role, both as a soloist and in providing a bass line. The audience are encouraged to click fingers on beats 2 and 4 of each bar, except during the tuba solo, and each player should click their fingers when not playing. The structure of the piece is relatively straightforward – a 4/4 swing arrangement of the well-known tune, interspersed with a 12-bar blues structure for the trumpet and tuba solos (G to I and K to M). It can be summarised as follows (by calling the first half of the well-known tune theme A, the second half theme B & the 12-bar blues progression theme C):

I hope you enjoy this piece as much as I have enjoyed writing it, the performers have enjoyed playing it & the audiences have enjoyed listening to it.

J. Gareth Brown

May 2015