Sanae Ishikawa: Grown-up Christmas Gift

Jazz of Japan #64 • Dec 24, 2018 • Brian McCrory

Enterprising singer Sanae Ishikawa presents us with her passionate voice on Grown-up Christmas Gift from 2018, a mini-album celebrating classic and modern Christmas songs in a jazz and pop setting. As part of her successful Seasonal Japanese Songbook Project crowdfunding, the popular singer released this album along with her full-length album 冬-Winter- to great anticipation, just in time for the Christmas season that year. 春-Spring- (2019) and 夏-Summer- (2020) have also been released in this jazzy J-pop series, with a hope of seeing 秋-Autumn- in the not-too-distant future.

The first track on Grown-up Christmas Gift is the main show, a thirteen-minute “Christmas Medley” featuring Ishikawa’s resonant voice gracing seven classic holiday tunes and popular songs. Stops on the musical tour include “All I Want For Christmas Is You”, “Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let it Snow!”, “Silent Night”, “Jingle Bells”, “Winter Wonderland”, “The Christmas Song”, and “Happy Xmas”. As the singer moves from song to song, the mood, rhythm, and instrumentation change as well, where jazz piano, organ, guitar, and choirs result in a charming holiday medley.

Track two features Ishikawa with “Soft Voice”, a four-part vocal group singing “Sutekina Holiday” in Japanese, and the final track presents her intimate duo of vocal and guitar performing the Billboard pop hit “Grown-up Christmas List”.

Grown-up Christmas Gift by Sanae Ishikawa

• Sanae Ishikawa - vocal
• Takayoshi Baba - guitar
• Hideaki Hori - piano, keyboard
• Koji Yasuda - bass
• Sohnosuke Imaizumi - drums, bell

Released in 2018 on Sanae Ishikawa Seasonal Japanese Songbook Project as SJSP-002.

Japanese names: Sanae Ishikawa 石川早苗 Takayoshi Baba 馬場孝喜 Hideaki Hori 堀秀彰 Koji Yasuda 安田幸司 Sohnosuke Imaizumi 今泉総之輔

Audio and Video

• Promotional video for Sanae Ishikawa’s “Everything”