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Chris Botti, December (2002)
Jazz superstar Chris Botti is a skilled and tasteful
trumpeter, so it’s no surprise that his album of
holiday songs goes down smoother than a second glass of
spiked eggnog. From “The Christmas Song” to “The First Noel”
to Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah,” Botti offers up a quietly
gorgeous take on several Christmas classics. Put this on after
the party’s over and everyone’s gone home.
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Andy Warr and Andy Stokes,
’Zat You, Santa? (2011)
Portland’s Andy Stokes is arguably Oregon’s bestknown
R&B singer. Andy Warr is a talented saxophonist from
Bend with funky flair. Put ’em together and you get ten tracks
of Christmas favorites, pumped up with bouncy bass lines,
vibrant horns and heaping helpings of soul. The highlight:
Stokes digging deep into the bluesy side of “Please Come
Home for Christmas.”
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BONUS: Willamette Week’s annual
Another Gray Christmas compilation
From 2007 to 2011, the Portland alt-weekly
Willamette Week put together annual compilations of
left-of-center Christmas tunes from a whole bunch of the
city’s indie acts, and they called it Another Grey Christmas.
(For two years. Then they changed it to Another Gray
Christmas for some reason. Or probably no reason.) The
series seems to have petered out in 2011, but it lives on at
a long-neglected Bandcamp profile (anothergraychristmas.
bandcamp.com), where you can click around and check
out originals and traditionals by artists like Typhoon, Nick
Jaina, Dolorean, Laura Gibson, Your Rival, Mic Crenshaw
and Pure Country Gold. You’ll be hard-pressed to find a
broader and more Portland-y vision of Christmas.
Listen on Spotify
Find our Oregon holiday
playlist online.
28 1859 OREGON’S MAGAZINE NOVEMBER | DECEMBER 2017