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Gary Clark plays piano in a sentimental and romantic style reminiscent of '40s era pop accompanists, overplaying melodies and putting up a prodigious wall of notes. I was glad he chose to include Rodgers and Hammerstein's My Favorite Things, not only because I love to hear this song around the Christmas season, but also because it exemplifies the kind of song Clark seems to be most at home with: those timeless favorites written by Broadway and Hollywood composers during the middle part of the 20th century.

My favorite on the record, though, was Clark's own composition, Winter Rhapsody. Restless and moody, it flows quickly over snow-covered hill and dale, so quickly, in fact, that it left me wanting a bit more. Clark's rendition of Vince Guaraldi's Christmastime is Here was a singular interpretation, as reflective as Guaraldi's but less ironic and more overtly sentimental. His version of The Christmas Waltz, however, was more understated than I had expected. For a tune he could have ripped through with his Blitzkreiging fingers, his arrangement turned out to be surprisingly gentle, sort of a last-slow-dance-of-the-evening. Which is to say that his arrangements were anything but predictable, even as he was interpreting a seasonally-predictable set of tunes .

--Richard Banks
(Reviewed in 2002)

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Gary Clark

Gary Clark Christmas

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