Christmas Joy – Fiona Joy Hawkins

2011 / Little Hartley Music – 56 minutes

www.mainlypiano.com/2011_Reviews/Hawkins-Christmas_Joy.html

Christmas Joy is Fiona Joy Hawkins’ beautiful contribution to the world of Christmas and holiday music. She co-produced the album with Grammy Award winner Corin Nelsen, with Will Ackerman acting as production advisor. Hawkins appears on piano and some of the vocals, backed by a very impressive list of musicians and singers that include Philip Aaberg, Will Ackerman, Heather Rankin, Charlie Bisharat, and Eugene Friesen. The eleven tracks include four originals and seven familiar and traditional Christmas pieces, but even the traditional songs are given a brand new feel with improvisation and original interpretations. Until you’ve heard “Jingle Bells” with didgeridoo in the background, you haven’t really heard it! It is interesting to note that Fiona recorded this album on a Stuart and Son’s piano, a relatively new Australian piano that is hand-made and getting rave reviews all over the world. This really isn’t just another Christmas album – it is more of a musical event that follows up Hawkins’ multi-award winning 2008 album Blue Dream.

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FIONA JOY HAWKINS

Ice: Piano Slightly Chilled..
Little Hartley Music (2008)

There’s nothing like getting the new year off to an energizing start, something which pianist/keyboardist Fiona Joy Hawkins does on Ice: Piano Slightly Chilled, an album that sets the bar mighty high for 2008 chill-out recordings. I was caught completely unawares by this dramatic about-face from her previous release, Angel Above My Piano, which was more of a “traditional” new age piano/electronic keyboard recording. Ice… literally bursts out of the gate running flat-out and never looks back, ushering in Hawkins as an immediate contemporary of artists like Ryan Farish (whose music this resembles at times) and Amethystium. However, this is no mere Enigma knock off, no sir. Thanks to the complementary talents of guitarist Dieter Kleeman, didgeridoo player Michael Jackson, and Dave Hopper’s bass, Ice… is a full-on chill-out assault, at times amping it up and letting the sparks fly with stinging guitar leads and passionate didge playing (Hawkins hails from down under, hence the didge’s presence).

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“Fiona Joy Hawkins’ BLUE DREAM began as the most ambitious project of my entire career and resulted in one of the most remarkable collaborations this genre has ever known. The scope of what we contemplated in the beginning was so vast as to be nearly paralyzing, but with Fiona’s talent, both as a composer and player, and a group of musicians of world-class caliber, a 67:50 suite of music resulted. The music itself spans a broad range of styles and ethnicities and yet (though we didn’t know whether we’d succeed until the very end) is magically cohesive. It works! Never has faith been more rewarded. In the process we restored meaning to a word which has been sorely abused; Blue Dream is unique and I’m as proud of it (and Fiona) as anything I’ve ever worked on in my 35 year career of Grammy Awards and gold and platinum records.”

Will Ackerman Windham County, Vermont 2008

Review Bill Binkelman – 04-01-2009 FIONA JOY HAWKINS
Blue Dream
Little Hartley Music (2008)

For a 180 degree turnaround from her electronica CD Ice: Piano Slightly Chilled (released earlier this year), Australia’s Fiona Joy Hawkins journeyed halfway around the world, teamed up with super-producer Will Ackerman in his Imaginary Road Studios in Vermont and recorded the jaw-dropping Blue Dream, a tour de force for both artist and producer. Comprised of 22 tracks (!!!), the album is Hawkins’ “most personal piece of music I have written yet,” and is literally “autobiographical” (per her liner notes). She refers to the album as a “piece” of music because, while there are indeed 22 “cuts” on the CD, the music flows unendingly throughout, the segues from fast pieces to slow meditations handled seamlessly yet with clear delineations, so that a listener who goes to selected tracks will not notice the lack of spacing yet someone who plays the album all the way through will discover a “whole” greater than the sum of its parts. This is just one of many allures of Blue Dream, a landmark recording for Hawkins and yet another feather in Will Ackerman’s cap!

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