Mark Bodino : Classical Guitar Christmas Music : CD

Jingle Bells; Little Drummer Boy; O Christmas Tree; Angels We Have heard On High; We Wish You A Merry Christmas;Away in A Manger; Deck The Hall; Go Tell It On The Mountain; God rest Ye Merry Gentlemen; Good King Wenceslas; Greensleeves; Hark! The Herald Angels Sing; It Came Upon a Midnight Clear; Joy To The World;O Come All Ye Faithful ; O Holy Night; O Little Town of Bethlehem; Silent Night ; The First Noel ;We Three Kings.

Mark Bodino

CD: Unable to provide Details- Available on Spotify and other sites

Bodino has made many albums over the years, and it seems that he plays in a wide variety of styles of music. As a result, this album is a cross – over in various ways, as the performances are not really classical to any great extent. The first thing that struck me was that he was obviously multi – tracking, as there was percussion included along with at least two and sometimes three guitars.

The first track, Jungle Bells was quite pleasant but it was the melody played on the lead instrument, and a chordal, arpeggiated accompaniment with some percussion. Fair enough, but it didn’t excite me much. The trouble was that Little Drummer Boy was in the same vein. There was no real ‘arranging’ of the pieces to make them sound more interesting.

I was hoping that this would not be the case for the rest of the tracks on this album, but I am afraid that it did prove to be so. So in the end what you get here is the lead instrument just playing a rather uncomplicated version of the piece, with another guitar or two, just playing along. I was bored by about track 5 onwards, but however you might entirely enjoy this type of playing, as it is quite well recorded, and you do get the tunes that you know and love, but I really was hoping for a bit more.

Chris Dumigan