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More About

• Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
• Lynn Baker
• Duke Ellington
• Billy Strayhorn
• Benny Goodman

Are you in the holiday spirit but can't stand the thought of yet another performance of Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker? (There are three productions of it in the city, you know.) How about supporting a jazzed-up approach to seasonal standbys like "We Three Kings," "Jingle Bells" and "Oh Little Town of Bethlehem"? Creative Music Works and the Lamont School of Music present just that inMusic for Christmas 2000, at the Houston Fine Arts Center on Thursday, December 21. During the performance, an orchestra directed by Lynn Baker will offer new takes on Christmas tunes by the likes of the Glenn Miller Orchestra and Benny Goodman. The centerpiece of the performance will be Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn's arrangement of The Nutcracker Suite, with such renamings as "Toot Toot Tootie Toot" for "Dance of the Reed Pipes" and "Sugar Rum Cherry" replacing "Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy." The angels and their trumpets should definitely hail this lively event as one worth singing about.