A Charlie Brown Christmas, the first television special with characters from Charles Schulz’s Peanuts comic strip, aired on CBS in 1965. The special was novel at the time, due to its use of child actors to voice the characters and its soundtrack: jazz music from Vince Guaraldi — both happy and mournful at times — and distinct from the frenetic music typical of most animated shows.
A Charlie Brown Christmas went on to become enormously popular, earning itself a Peabody Award and an Emmy.
This year, in keeping with tradition, the San Francisco Symphony will perform the Vince Guaraldi Trios’s A Charlie Brown Christmas album live with dancing, an animated backdrop, and actors playing Snoopy, Charlie Brown, Linus, Lucy, and the rest of the Peanuts.
Along with the classic album that has been certified quintuple platinum, voted into the Grammy Hall of Fame, and added to the Library of Congress’s National Recording Registry, the SF Symphony will perform never-before-heard symphonic selections from Guaraldi’s full Peanuts catalogue on Dec. 21 & 22.
The program draws from various Peanuts universe TV specials such as It’s the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown and You’re a Good Sport Charlie Brown, and will feature selections like the Good Grief Medley, which includes “Frieda (With the Naturally Curly Hair)” and “Charlie Brown Theme.”
Producer Lee Mendelson worked with Schulz on the Charlie Brown TV specials for 30 years. Two of his sons, Sean and Jason Mendelson, grew up with the Peanuts, were voice actors in the shows, and carry on the Peanuts legacy today. The brothers worked together to develop the new symphonic selections, and are particularly excited medleys from the larger Peanuts universe will be performed by the Symphony.
The project began to take shape in 2020 when the brothers discovered original, mislabeled session tapes. “Not only did we find all of the scores of all the shows that we already had mixed down to mono, but we found all the cutting room material,” Jason Mendelson told SF Classical Voice. “We hear Vince talking to the band, and we hear him deciding, ‘You know what, I like it at this tempo instead of that tempo.’”
The brothers then contacted David Benoit, a jazz pianist who worked on soundtracks for the later Peanuts specials and was considered an heir to Guaraldi.
“Because we love David Benoit, we first sent the stuff to him and said, ‘Let's make some symphonic pieces out of this,” Jason said. “Sean and David worked together and created such beautiful arrangements. The beauty of this is everybody already knows this music from their whole lives, but it's never been done in a symphonic way.”
The brothers worked together to fit the songs together thematically. Sean said he can’t wait for people to hear them.
“My motto that I tell everybody is ‘every season is Guaraldi season,’ because it's not just Christmas. He's got other seasons locked down, and we're trying to bring that to the surface. And what better way to do that than with the San Francisco Symphony?” Sean said. “For Jason and I, I think one of our favorites is a song called ‘Rain, Rain Go Away,’ which sounds like classical music. It's just majestic. It's ethereal and other worldly, and it transcends all music, in my opinion. And that's what's so great about this. You're connecting jazz and classical in a profound way.”
Along with music production Sean Mendelson is an advocate for the musical development of four-year-olds and under, and works with daycares and children’s caregivers. He said he wants kids to feel the joy and connection that comes from music, thinks the upcoming SF Symphony concert is the perfect vehicle for that.
“We're going to have music and movement and imagery all coming together and it’s going to make it an event,” he said. “I just have such gratitude in my heart that I'm connected to my father's legacy and the Peanuts legacy and Vince's legacy. We hope that that everybody enjoys it as much as we enjoy working on it.”
