Did you make any changes to his music for the performance?
We added a jazz trio to it. Most holiday music, especially his, didn’t have drums. It was mostly just orchestra. When you go back and listen to Nat’s holiday songs, it’s just orchestra and voice. We took the orchestrations and reduced them to a smaller amount of musicians and added a jazz trio. We tried to keep the original aesthetic of his songs and arrangements but modernized them a bit and added a little more grooves in some areas.
Did you ever meet his daughter Natalie Cole or any of his family?
I worked with Natalie. She sang on my record “Come Sunday” from The Mosaic Project: Love and Soul and in fact it was her last publicly released recording session from what we know. I knew Natalie for years. My dad Solomon Carrington never worked with Nat but he was good friends with Freddy Cole, Nat’s brother. In fact Freddie did our 2019 National Kennedy Center Orchestra date. He was a singer and pianist just like Nat and was well known too and just recently passed away [in 2020].
Check out the flyer below for tickets and more information on Nat King Cole Christmas.
