PLATTSBURGH — Dr. Adrian Carr keeps his program under wraps until he delivers “The Seven Words of Christmas” 3 p.m., Sunday, Dec. 8 at the Plattsburgh Memorial Chapel, 100 U.S. Oval.
Admission is $15, cash or check only, at the door.
“This came about because the Chapel Committee asked me to do another concert,” Carr, a Grammy-nominated composer and pianist, said.
“They said we would like you to do it in December. I said, wow, okay, December. Hmm, holiday time. Hmm. My holiday journey started in 2011 because I came out with my Zen Christmas album. That was kind of like new age renditions of some of my favorite holiday songs.”
For him, Sunday’s concert is a great opportunity to incorporate his Zen Christmas carols and pieces into the concert as well as his regular repertoire.
“So, it became a big challenge to do that first of all,” he said.
“Then, I kind of mixed the metaphors because there are the seven last words of Christ, and then there’s Christmas. How about if I came up with the seven words of Christmas? So, I came up with my list. The list kind of changed as I started working with it. At the concert I’m going to reveal my list of the seven words of Christmas. It’s a mystery until Sunday.”
Carr has never performed these songs in concert, so this is his world debut.
“It’s kind of my first Christmas concert that I’ve really ever done,” he said.
“It’s kind of new and hope that it becomes kind of a tradition here at the Chapel where I can come back every year and do like a little Christmas concert. I would love that. It’s kind of a new thing for me, and it’s the first time I’m incorporating these songs.”
In 2011, he recorded Zen Christmas in two weeks from beginning to finish.
“It was real holiday inspiration,” he said.
“I started in November. By the middle of November, I had it out on iTunes. It was a momentary inspiration. I said, let’s go for it. I wanted to do something different because we all hear the same Christmas songs with the same arrangements with the same artists. Sometimes you kind of miss the beauty of these songs, and so I really wanted to try to bring out the simplicity and the beauty of the songs that I chose.”
Carr will merge four Christmas songs in Sunday’s concert.
“Probably the most storied one is Silent Night because in World War I it brought an armistice to the troops on Christmas Eve,” he said.
“That to me is just really inspiring. I wished we lived every day in Silent Night where we could just be at peace with our enemies and sing together. That’s going to be the last Christmas carol on the program. That’s got to have a special significance for everybody. It doesn’t matter what religion you are because it’s just music and the ideas.”
It’s the perfect song to be performed in the Plattsburgh Memorial Chapel whose origins stem from Churchwomen’s Committee, who built the chapel as a memorial to the graduates of the Plattsburgh Military Training Camps “Plattsburgh Idea,” who died during World War I.
Carr will perform on the Chapel’s Steinway piano.
“It’s a beautiful place to see a concert because the acoustics are very wet,” he said.
“It’s just such a lovely place, and they still have the alert there at the front of the chapel in case the servicemen had to leave. It’s really a historical place. It preserves the history of what happened actually there and what happened here in Plattsburgh.”