Friday, December 23, 2005

An Extended Family Holiday Outing, Onstage

By LAURA SINAGRA
Published: December 23, 2005

For the Canadian folkie sisters Kate and Anna McGarrigle, Christmas could never be simply "the holidays." The intuitive and cerebral siblings require that specificity as they mine its place in their own past, familial intimacies, disappointment and heartbreak, and joys metaphysical and quotidian. On Wednesday night at Carnegie Hall, they alluded to the sacred nature of their musical inquiry. "We wanted to get pews up here," said Anna, "but it was too expensive."

Joined by an extended troupe of children and other kin, the sisters performed songs from "The McGarrigle Christmas Hour," an omnibus project involving lots of the same pals who sat in on "The McGarrigle Hour" in 1998. While their show's selection drew from memories of a Quebec childhood in a musical English-French household, the McGarrigles also used the concept of Christmas as a prism through which to view the history of popular song.

After opening with everyone singing "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen," the show was a swirl of instrumental and choral configurations. The repertory ranged from the English "Old Waits Carol" to crooner classics to French traditionals and members' Christmas ruminations.

The onstage crowd of roughly a score included an elder McGarrigle sister, Jane; Kate's children, Rufus and Martha Wainwright; Anna's husband, Dane Lanken, and daughter Lily; and good friends Emmylou Harris and Sloan Wainwright, whom Kate introduced as her "ex-sister-in-law."

The music was anchored by a band of longtime collaborators including the violinist Joel Zifkin and the singer-guitarist Chaim Tannenbaum. Still, the night belonged to the headliners and their daughters, who often formed a chorus and sang at times in pairs, contrasting Kate and Martha's piquant style with Anna and Lily's ethereal tones.

Conjuring the kookiness of a parlor gathering, Kate played piano and sometimes banjo, and Anna the accordion and guitar. Martha Wainwright and her cousin Ms. Lanken made a jaunty duet of Jackson Browne's "Rebel Jesus." But the room's acoustics were kindest to Rufus Wainwright, whose voice cut through group numbers like a solo instrument. On the first verse of the odd 1951 carol of cultural understanding, "Some Children See Him," his voice powered lines like "Some children see Him bronzed and brown/ The Lord of heav'n to earth come down," with the chill-inducing reverberation that the hall exists to complement.

Teddy Thompson, son of the English folk stars Richard and Linda Thompson, and Ms. Harris lent their solo voices, respectively, to "The Holly and the Ivy" and "O Little Town of Bethlehem." But Sloan Wainwright garnered the most applause with the folk-gospel "Thank God, It's Christmas."

The mood was festive, yet certain moments verged on the artistically holy, as when the charming "Il Est Ne" gave way to the haunting, mandolin-backed "Ça Bergers," or when Martha's Wainwright's voice achieved an exquisite alto dissolve on the French "Three Angels." When Mr. Tannenbaum joked before singing "Blue Christmas" with aplomb that "In my house, we thought Elvis's Christmas album was a piece of liturgical music," one McGarrigle beat the other to the quip: "Well, it was!"