This is the type of CD you'll play over and over.  It's festive and fun!
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I just received Laura Caviani's Christmas production on the 25th of May and immediately gave it a listen.  People, this is not a Christmas album, this is a jazz album.  There have been many Christmas albums produced in the jazz genre, but these have been self-conscious attempts at extracting hipness from the Yuletide theme for commercial reasons.  That is not the case here.  Ms. Caviani's CD is a musical statement of powerful musical and technical competence which does not depend on thematic association with any religious or otherwise holidays.  The musicianship throughout is of the highest caliber, the writing superb, and the sidemen are world class.  Lucia Newell stands out as an instrumentalist whose axe happens to be her voicebox! This CD is well produced and cleanly executed.  You can listen to this one in the middle of June as well as Christmas, no matter.  The music is its own powerful statement.  Two zillion stars for this one! 
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KRINGLE ON THE KEYS

Tom Surowicz

The Christmas holiday concert season begins in earnest Sunday with a CD release party for Twin Cities jazz pianist Laura Caviani’s terrific “Angels We Haven’t Heard”.  Wintry yet warm, a tinsel-time treat with depth, this is a CD that delivers nearly as many gifts as Santa himself.  You get great arrangments, bristling swing, powerful solos, timeless carols, charismatic vocals by Lucia Newell and Phil Hey, the hippest little drummer boy in town. Caviani lights up “O Christmas Tree,” does Tchaikovsky proud with a free-wheeling “Nutcracker Medley”, tips her stocking cap to Herbie Hancock on “Silent Night” and retools 
“Angels We Have Heard on High.”  Saxophonoist Pete Whitmans burns in a “new thing” Archie Shepp-worthy way on “Little Drummer Boy.”  And Newell sounds like a frozen prairie version of Shirley Horn on the marvelous and moving ballad “In the Bleak Midwinter”. 
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