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Too cool. I review tons of holiday music, including quite a few piano instrumentals, and they can begin to sound quite similar. Happily, I can report that Frederick Isaac's hour-long (59 minutes!) Christmas Fantasies is impressively different, and I mean that in an entirely positive way.

The supremely talented Isaac creates remarkable flights of fancy flowing from a dozen holiday chestnuts. His fantasies are like impressionistic art; he starts with the core of a familiar tune, then explodes the rigid contruct with his vivid imagination. Don't get me wrong--the essence of each carol remains, so that the listener never finds herself cast adrift. Instead, the audience is riveted, waiting to find out what new and creative interpretation lurks around the next musical bar. And Isaac is courageous, unabashedly mixing styles into a mish-mash of classical, jazz, and new age, and utterly unafraid to inject discordant phrasing, unusual tempo and mood shifts, and unexpected rests into well-worn Christmas tunes. The result is brilliant--both exciting and accessible.

It's the day after Thanksgiving, and the weather is unseasonably cold here in Minnesota. Darkness has fallen, and the house is filled with the glow of seasonal lights. Christmas Fantasies is keeping me excellent and compelling company this evening. As I finish the wonderfully exotic We Three Kings of Orient Are (with some interwoven ragtime), I contemplate how very lucky I am to have the opportunity to hear such a broad range of creative holiday fare each year, including excellent executions like this one.

Bravo, Frederick Isaac! I expect that I will make your Christmas Fantasies my own several times this holiday season--and for many seasons to come. Happy Holidays!

--Carol Swanson
(Reviewed in 2007)

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From the liner notes:

Frederick Isaac, piano


From the Website:

Frederick Isaac is a Michigan-based pianist and composer. He has been a working musician for nearly two decades, starting out as a professional drummer while still in his teens. While pursuing his academic musical training, Frederick began to develop his own voice, taking in influences from both the classical styles and jazz idioms. The eventual result was the development of a unique and expressive tone palette which offers structure, imagination, and a strong melodic content.

Frederick's experience ranges from being a keyboardist for rock legend Ben E. King to accompanying for the famed Joffrey Ballet of New York. He also "gigged"as a jazz and salsa pianist, further demonstrating a well-rounded eclecticism. In more recent years, Frederick has been involved in accompanying/directing for professional music theater and writing/directing music for small chamber ensembles and church ministries, as well as being a college professor.

Frederick Isaac

Christmas Fantasies

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Track List