Sanae Ishikawa: Grown-up Christmas Gift

Dec 24, 2018

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”.