Overview
The MTC Kids Jam concert series is specially designed with families in mind! Join us in the MTC lobby at 10 a.m. for art activities, followed by an hour-long concert with an acclaimed children’s musician.
This unique holiday show is a musical celebration inspired by the Christmas sing-alongs that Grammy Award-winner Dan Zanes and jazz vocalist/music therapist Claudia Zanes experienced every year while growing up in New Hampshire. That was then, and the theme was Christmas. This is now and the 21st century version of these legendary parties includes Christmas classics, of course, but there’s so much more.
The Holiday Sing Along songbook—printed and distributed to the audience members—includes seasonal numbers from a variety of traditions, languages, and locations. Songs from Puerto Rico, Korea, Wales, Tunisia, Haiti, and Washington, D.C., are represented alongside reimagined versions of the ones we all know and love, such as “Let it Snow,” “Silent Night,” and “Deck the Halls.” Hannukah, Korean New Year, Kwanzaa, and Winter Solstice are also celebrated.
For this show, Smithsonian Folkways recording artists Dan + Claudia have taken their electric folk sound to a fresh place with jazz vocalist and recent Howard University graduate Tyree Austin, alongside multi-instrumentalist and children’s music star Elena Moon Park. The result is an inviting blend of four voices with guitar, violin, trumpet, harmonica, flute, spoons, percussion, and mandolin that artfully brings the intimate feeling of the living room to the big stage.
This quartet embodies the festive far-reaching spirit of the season and the legacy of intergenerational communal music making. It’s in these songs that we can renew our connections to each other and imagine the best of life’s possibilities for the year ahead. The Holiday Sing Along is an ideal sensory friendly presentation.
This is a free show but reservations are recommended and can be made online.
Admission
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