Arthur Hanlon was 6 years old when he saw and heard a piano for the first time. It was three days before Christmas and his dad came home with a small piano as a gift for his six children. Half an hour later, a professional musician – a friend of his father – came and began to play Christmas songs.
Little Arthur was stunned by the magic that came out of that soundboard. While his brothers danced and ran from one side of the house to the other, he stayed the whole time by the piano like, like a magnet.
“For me it’s my favorite time of year” Arthur said in a phone conversation from his Miami home. “Everything was like an explosion of colors.”
What his father never imagined was that Arthur would choose music as a career. The intention of bringing the piano home was for the boys to develop their personality.
“After an argument with my dad he told me, ‘Let’s do one thing, in New York there are the best conservatories; If you go in there, we can talk, if not, you have to work like the rest of your brothers, ‘”said Arthur. “And they accepted me into the Manhattan School of Music.”
That school, however, is located in a one hundred percent Latino neighborhood, where Puerto Ricans, Colombians and Dominicans abound. Arthur, who already brought strong influences from Motown, a rhythm created by African Americans and learned in the bars and clubs of his native Detroit, fell in love with the Latin sounds that were already beginning to dominate the scene back in the nineties.
“For me it was impossible not to hear that,” he said. “I started playing Latinos in New York and it felt really good, super natural.”
Since then Arthur, of Irish descent, has been a prominent figure on the Latino music scene. Some of his collaborations have been with artists such as Laura Pausini, Ricardo Montaner, Marc Anthony and Ozuna.
Now, to celebrate the holidays, the musician made A Holiday Christmas Piano, a video that It is now available on his Facebook page and in which he performs four Christmas songs together with a band of five musicians. The special, from which an EP will be released, was filmed at the Church of the Glades in South Florida between a background of LED screens and a synchronized light show.
One of the songs that are included in the concert is “Silent Night”, the first song that Arthur learned on the piano.
The challenge, however, was to give a different touch to that and to songs like “Christmas Carol” and “O Holy Night” –also included– that have been recorded thousands of times .
“Christmas songs are always my challenge,” said Arthur. “Sometimes I have a hard time sitting down and inventing something that people don’t expect.”
The solution this time around It was to include Latin percussion, a lot of drums and bass rhythm.
“It came out super ‘cool’”, he said. “We are super happy.”