MTC Kids Jam – Dan + Claudia Zanes Holiday Sing Along featuring Elena Moon Park

This unique holiday show is a musical celebration inspired by the Christmas sing-alongs that Grammy Award-winner Dan Zanes and jazz vocalist/music therapist Claudia Zanes experienced every year while growing up in New Hampshire. That was then, and the theme was Christmas. This is now and the 21^st century version of these legendary parties includes Christmas classics, of course, but there’s so much more.

The Holiday Sing Along includes seasonal numbers from a variety of traditions, languages, and locations. Songs from Puerto Rico, Korea, Wales, Tunisia, Haiti, and Washington D.C. are represented alongside reimagined versions of the ones we all know and love, such as “Let it Snow,” “Silent Night,” and “Deck the Halls.” Hannukah, Korean New Year, Kwanzaa, and winter solstice are also celebrated.

For this show, Smithsonian Folkways recording artists Dan + Claudia have taken their electric folk sound to a fresh place with multi-instrumentalist and children’s music star Elena Moon Park. The result is an inviting blend of three voices with guitar, violin, trumpet, harmonica, flute, spoons, percussion, and mandolin that artfully brings the intimate feeling of the living room to the big stage.

This trio embodies the festive far-reaching spirit of the season and the legacy of intergenerational communal music making. It’s in these songs that we can renew our connections to each other and imagine the best of life’s possibilities for the year ahead.

Dan + Claudia Zanes

Haitian American jazz vocalist and music therapist Claudia Zanes and Grammy Award-winning all-ages entertainer Dan Zanes have been making music together since the day they met in 2016. During their time together, the two have toured extensively; written and performed “Night Train 57: A Sensory Friendly Comic Folk Opera” for the Kennedy Center; created “House Party: A Family Roots Music Treasury” songbook for Quarto Publishing Group; and released their first record as a duo, “Let Love Be Your Guide,” for Smithsonian Folkways. Their follow-up Folkways album, “Pieces of Home,” was released in August 2024.

Vocals! Guitar! Flute! Percussion! Trombone! Harmonica! Jaw Harp! Dan and Claudia bring their social electric folk music with them wherever they go. People attend the highly interactive concerts knowing they’ll be singing along and dancing to a sound that lies at the center of Haitian folk, early rock ‘n’ roll, sea shanties, Black gospel, and blues.

Elena Moon Park

Elena Moon Park is a musician, educator, and producer living in Brooklyn, New York. She is a freelance violinist and multi-instrumentalist specializing in contemporary classical and family music. She is also co-artistic director of the Brooklyn-based arts organization Found Sound Nation, which uses collaborative music creation to connect people across cultural divides. Originally from Oak Ridge, Tennessee, Park studied anthropology and ethnomusicology at Northwestern University and completed her M.A. in Urban Policy from The New School in New York. Before moving to NYC, Park served as a development consultant for grassroots social justice organizations on the south and west sides of Chicago. While pursuing an urban policy degree from The New School, she began performing and touring the world with the all-ages folk rock band Dan Zanes and Friends, singing and playing violin, trumpet, mandolin, jarana, spoons, and musical saw.

In 2012, Found Sound Nation entered into a partnership with the U.S. Department of State's Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs to launch OneBeat, an annual global music diplomacy program that brings together musicians from around the globe to the U.S. each fall for one month of creative collaboration, performance and engagement with communities. In 2012, Elena also released her debut all-ages album called “Rabbit Days and Dumplings,” featuring reimagined folk and children's music from East Asia. Park continues to perform with all-ages musicians Dan Zanes and Sonia De Los Santos, and leads her own all-ages folk-rock band, Elena Moon Park and Friends.