Jingle All the Way

Béla Fleck & The Flecktones bring their signature genre-defying sound to reimagined, jazz-infused holiday classics on their GRAMMY-winning album, Jingle All the Way, in this remastered limited-edition reissue. Hitting #1 on the Top Contemporary Jazz chart and earning the 2009 Grammy for Best Pop Instrumental Album, Jingle All the Way is a playful and innovative take on often cliché holiday tunes – whether its "The Twelve Days of Christmas" performed in 12 different keys and 12 different time signatures over the course of the tune, or a medley of five Christmas tunes being played together, simultaneously. “Christmas music is inside everyone's DNA,” says Fleck. “Jingle All the Way is an open doorway for listeners to understand the Flecktones' music.” "Growling Tuvan throat singing takes over “Jingle Bells.” “Silent Night” becomes modal jazz with abstruse harmonies. “The 12 Days of Christmas” zigzags through a maze of meter shifts and key changes (perhaps “The 12 Tones of Christmas”?). And Tchaikovsky’s “Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairies” pings its melody in harmonics from Béla Fleck’s banjo. Those are just four of the virtuosic transformations Mr. Fleck and his band came up with on an album that applies all sorts of musicianly gamesmanship to Christmas songs (and one Hanukkah tune) that can sometimes take an aural squint to recognize. Bluegrass and jazz are the Flecktones’ foundations, as can be heard in their nimble version of “Sleigh Ride.” But the song choices are eclectic — Bach, klezmer, Joni Mitchell, “Linus and Lucy” from “A Charlie Brown Christmas” — and the arrangements even more so. Give these musicians a musical parameter and they’ll toy with it." - Jon Pareles, The New York Times