Get the Christmas Spirit
with a Yuletide Concert Featuring The Rankin Sisters
By CATHOLINE BUTLER
VANCOUVER - The Rankin Sisters – Raylene, Heather and Cookie – along with some friends will be back in B.C. to do a benefit concert on December 3 at the Bell Centre for the Performing Arts in Surrey, and on December 4 at St. Andrews Wesley Church in Vancouver.
The Rankin sisters will kick off the Christmas holidays with a soiree of Yuletide cheer. Filled with the sisters’ trademark Celtic-influenced vocals, this concert tour draws from their Christmas album Do You Hear.
Recorded during a Rankin Family band hiatus in 1997, the sisters seized the opportunity to create an album to express their love of the holiday season. “Some of the album’s tunes come from our past, some tunes come from personal experiences of Christmas, some are more religious, some aren’t. They are vignettes of different aspects of Christmas,” explains Raylene.
This Christmas tour reunites the sisters as they set out to celebrate the dearest of their family’s holiday memories. In fact, the myriad of songs hand-picked for Do You Hear, are like the pages of a family scrapbook, each conjuring its own set of memories. Tracks from their new CD, Angels We Have Heard On High and Oh Night Of Joy And Gladness, sung a cappella, are both tunes which the sisters performed in Mabou’s local church choir as children.
Some of the other tracks on the CD are, Ave Maria, The Coventry Carol and I Wonder As I Wander, along with the sisters more playful rendition of Let It Snow, showcase the more festive aspects of the holiday season.
Joining Raylene, Heather and Cookie on this Christmas tour are some of the Maritime’s most talented musicians and their long time friends. The Rankin family’s drummer and percussionist Scott Ferguson re-joins the sisters, along with pianist Steve Amirault, guitarist Clarence Deveau, bassist Bruce Jacobs and cousin Mairi Rankin on fiddle.
What an enjoyable introduction as we enter the Christmas spirit and season of giving to those less fortunate in our society. Another reason to feel good about this concert is that we are also giving to a very worthy cause, since proceeds from both concerts will go to benefit the Surrey Women’s Centre and the Red Cross. For more information about the concerts see page xx in this issue.
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