"Don Tiki’s Hot Lava Holiday Songs"
Don Tiki
(Taboo)
Don Tiki founders Kit "Perry Coma" Ebersbach and Lloyd "Fluid Floyd" Kandell welcome the year-end holidays with this economically packaged six-song collection of contemporary "exotica" music. They establish the mood — part "world music," part "jungle jazzy," part satire — with the opening song, "Xmas Eve at the Club Bambú." Flute, sax, assorted percussion instruments and several over-the-top vocalists — most notably the late Fritz "Delmar deWilde" Hasenpusch — maintain the exotic, romantic ambience through the final notes of the closing song, "Havana Gila" (sound it out to get the joke!).
"Don Tiki’s Hot Lava Holiday Songs" is available at www.dontiki.com.
www.dontiki.com
"Xmas Eve at the Club Bambü"
"A Christmas Wish"
Various artists
(Mistralwind/Audio Hawaii)
Anyone familiar with Hawaii’s vibrant theater scene will find the credits of this last-minute Christmas release ample reason to buy a copy. One of the producers is multitalented composer and vocalist Roslyn Catracchia, a core member of the ‘Ohi‘a Productions production team and an occasional stage performer. The other is her longtime musical partner, arranger and music programmer David Kauahikaua, known outside the theater community for his work with Frank De Lima. Several other participants have extensive credits in musical theater or opera: Mary Chesnut Hicks, Megan Mount and Zenia Zambrano Moura, to name three.
A majority of these Christmas songs celebrate Christ’s birth. Christina Souza sings "O Come, O Come Emmanuel" over an expansive orchestral arrangement. Vanessa Benavente conveys the awesome promise of "God Rest Ye, Merry Gentlemen," Mount stars in "No Eye Had Seen" and Moura’s voice soars over Kauahikaua’s dark yet inspirational arrangement of "What Child Is This."
There are also songs with secular themes. Catracchia sings of Christmas seen "Through the Eyes of a Child," and her mother, Beebe Freitas, plays celeste, an instrument that sounds similar to a glockenspiel, on a beautiful arrangement of "Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy" from "The Nutcracker."
Roslyn
P.O. Box 240571
Honolulu, HI 96824
"O Come, O Come Emamanuel"
