Natalie Cressman and Ian Faquini confirmed a new holiday EP, An Old Fashioned Christmas, set for release on December 8 as a limited 7-inch vinyl via 12/23 Records or digitally through GroundUp Music. In honor of Cressman’s late Trey Anastasio Band bandmate James Casey, all proceeds from An Old Fashioned Christmas will benefit The Colorectal Cancer Alliance and Eastern Virginia Medical School’s Hope’s Clinic, providing free colon cancer screenings to those in need.
An Old Fashioned Christmas was recorded on Christmas Eve 2022. Side A sees trombonist/vocalist Natalie Cressman and guitarist Ian Faquini performing Christmas classics like “Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas” and “I’ll Be Home for Christmas” along with holiday deep cuts including the title track, “a lesser-known Jimmy Van Heusen/Sammy Cahn tune, originally recorded in 1964 by Frank Sinatra.”
“An Old Fashioned Christmas” particularly resonated with Natalie when she first moved to New York City across the country from her family.
“The lyrics ‘I’d trade that whole Manhattan skyline/The shimmering steel and chrome/For one old fashioned Christmas back home’ really hit me at that particular time,” Cressman said. “The song sums up the feelings that I have around Christmas time – which is of happiness and childhood memories, but also of being caught up in the shuffle and wishing for simpler times.”
Side B sees the duo celebrating Faquini’s Brazilian heritage, putting a samba spin on Tchaikovsky’s “Waltz of the Flowers” from The Nutcracker — which carries a “joyful, sunny flavor.”
“I think people forget that half the world celebrates Christmas in the summer,” Faquini said.
The duo originally intended to stick close to Tchaikovsky’s original arrangement but in attempting to boil the orchestral piece down to a duo format, discovered the samba version.
“It was late at night and we had been inching our way through the original version,” Cressman recalled. “We just started goofing around, performing it as a samba.”
“[‘Waltz of the Flowers’] just worked better in a duet setting,” Ian noted. “When I was working out the arrangements, there were some parts that just felt impossible. We were going to miss a lot of different voices from the orchestra.” Cressman added, “Somehow, performing it as a samba gave it some space to be different. It took on a life of its own.”
Pre-order An Old Fashioned Christmas benefitting The Colorectal Cancer Alliance and Eastern Virginia Medical School’s Hope’s Clinic.
