Christmas A La Mode: Concert Band Conductor Score & Parts

Smith transforms a familiar holiday tune into a systematic exploration of modal interchange without sacrificing musicality or audience engagement. The journey through all seven modes gives your band a concrete, aurally memorable way to internalize what these scales actually sound like in context, and the arrangement lands solidly enough at Grade 2.5 that rehearsals focus on musical interpretation rather than technical survival.

A guided tour through harmonic geography. The arrangement opens with familiar territory, then ventures into increasingly unfamiliar modal landscapes before returning home in triumph. There's both intellectual curiosity and genuine enjoyment woven throughout.

Developing concert bands ready to connect music theory to live sound. This works especially well for programs that emphasize musicianship alongside technique, or for any director seeking a piece that doubles as both an engaging performance and a lesson in harmonic color.

• Emphasize the color shift in each mode section during sectionals. Dorian's minor-with-a-raised-6th character feels different from Phrygian's exotic darkness, and players who hear these distinctions will execute them with intention.
• The Locrian stop near the end creates real dramatic weight only if the band commits to its minor-flatted-2 sound as genuinely unsettling. Don't let it feel like a mistake.
• Shape the return to Ionian as genuine resolution and homecoming. After the modal journey, let the major key land with warmth and finality.

Program this early in the holiday concert to establish a festive mood while embedding a theory lesson into the performance itself. The piece works as an opener or early-set closer, and it plays well alongside more traditional seasonal selections since the modal concept gives it a contemporary, sophisticated edge despite using a century-old melody.

• Hearing and performing the intervallic differences between the seven modes
• Understanding modal interchange and color within a single melodic framework
• Balancing familiar material (the 'Jingle Bells' tune) with harmonic complexity
• Responding to conductor cues that signal mode changes and emotional shifts