December Songs paints a vivid portrait of a worldly young woman, jilted and adrift in a wintry New York City, interpreting everything she encounters as a reflection of her broken heart through richly varied melodies and striking yet unforced poetic imagery.
The work was written as a result of Yeston being commissioned to write a piece for the 1991 centennial celebration of New York's Carnegie Hall, where it was performed by cabaret singer Andrea Marcovicci and an uncredited pianist.
Neither the German romantics nor the French Impressionists nor the American modernists conceived a cycle in a pop idiom and with the emotional depth of the best musical theater.
Yet that`s precisely what Yeston has created in ”December Songs,” which is graced by melodies that are Mozartean in their simplicity, harmonies that plainly underscore the drama and lyrics at once poetic and colloquial.
Imagine a Rodgers and Hart musical for a cast of one-and with no dialogue, dancing or similar distractions-and you begin to see how ”December Songs” grips an audience.