Christmas Songs All Wrong

Parody improvisations on famous Christmas songs, altering them in funny ways:)

Here’s what a critic wrote:

“CHRISTMAS ALL WRONG”

Pianist Hakan Ali Toker takes everything you thought you knew about Christmas music and turns it upside down. His wild ride all over the 88s tosses up honky-tonk, jazz, classical, and boogie-woogie into a fearless mix of holiday merriment with deft pianism. He cleverly fools our ears in standard fare like “Silent Night” by using only the black keys in a blissful stream-of-consciousness, and then suddenly turns into a mad scientist on an unsuspecting white key, testing the “what if I try this?” theorem. Toker’s treatment is not a goofy science lab, but a giant fantasia of some of your favorite Christmas tunes that starts out deceptively innocent and ends with turning “Toyland” into a Jarrett-esque Iberian landscape. The album’s release is Dec. 9; grab it to entertain your most audacious Christmas cocktail parties and/or to use as a welcome antidote to the holiday chaos.

—Alexandra Ivanoff, arts contributor to the New York Times, Time Out Istanbul, Musical America, Hungarytoday.hu (Budapest), Harmonie (Prague), Andante (Istanbul), and AKOB (Turkey).