Rob Mathes Music

CHRISTMAS IS COMING

• 1. God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen
• 2. When the Baby Grew Up
• 3. Waiting for Love to Be Born
• 4. Deck the Halls
• 5. Angels We Have Heard on High w/ Vanessa Williams
• 6. Sweet Little Baby Boy w/ David Sanborn
• 7. Mary Had a Baby [Instrumental] w/ David Sanborn
• 8. William the Angel
• 9. Go Tell It on the Mountain w/ Michael McDonald
• 10. Silent Night w/ Michael McDonald
• 11. I Wonder as I Wander w/ Vanessa Williams
• 12. Wake up It's Christmas Morning
• 13. Intro/My Mother's Prayer

I worry sometimes because prospective clients will visit this site and go, “Huh! Christmas music. What is this guy??? A rube? Some kind of Christian Conservative?? A smarmy, sentimental man who looks a bit too much like Santa Claus??? Well........

Not exactly. I am religious in my way but with a true New York bent. A liberal who believes in metaphor and not in fundamentalism. I digress.

The story of the Nativity has always moved me. Innocence entering the world with the utmost fragility to change it, not by violent means but by turning priorities on their head. Mary, the angels, the hosts, the kings, the shepherds. Yes.....I am a sap for it all but..... my winter music is hard won. There is intensity in there and grit I think. Definitely worth hearing at least once. My arrangements for David Sanborn and Michael McDonald are strong. Listen to “Mary Had A Baby” and “Go Tell It” and Vanessa William’s “I Wonder As I Wander” which has an English Pastoral quality. The bonus cut has a typically hyperbolic intro that compares August Wilson to Shakespeare in a sense (“Shut up Rob!”). That said, “My Mother’s Prayer” is up there with “William The Angel” and “Although It Is The Night” from Evening Train I think.

This concert was filmed for PBS and I will probably eventually make many of those films available here. Some of them are on YouTube.

WILLIAM THE ANGEL

• 1. Christmas Is Coming -Introduction
• 2. When the Baby Grew Up
• 3. The Magi's Journey (The Very First Christmas Eve)
• 4. The Magi's Bridge (One More Time)
• 5. Back to the Manger
• 6. William the Angel
• 7. Gloria
• 8. I'll Fly Again
• 9. Good News
• 10. What Do I Find There
• 11. Rest Now, My Brother
• 12. Wake up, It's Christmas Morning
• 13. Waiting For Love to Be Born
• 14. One Small Glimpse
• 15. Christmas Is Coming

Regarding the record William The Angel, thanks to Food For The Hungry for supporting the recording of it and for Ed Manning who released it initially on his Night Music Productions label. That record spawned all the Christmas Concerts. Tracks to check out: “The Magi’s Journey” (based on Eliot’s poem), “Rest Now, My Brother” about a friend who died of AIDS, “What Do I Find There” (a blond blue eyed Jesus??? come on!!!) and “One Small Glimpse Of A Child.” Why anyone would release a Nativity based record in a world where hundreds of awful Christmas records are released every year??? I have no clue. Come November every year I go into a kind of heat. I listen to Vaughan Williams and Holst and Elgar and think about Jerusalem and Camels and Bethlehem and Kings and those melodies, those carols, Regent Street in London and Camden Town and Dickens and...................... well.............. Bruce Cockburn. Ladies and Gentlemen, I present to you humbly------William The Angel.