If this website serves any useful purpose at all, then surely that is to highlight music to people that they may like but hadn’t considered hearing, or weren’t aware of. All of us film music nerds have our lists of composers who we think – if only fate had intervened in a slightly different way, or whatever – could be front and centre in everyone’s minds. Top of my list is Mark McKenzie. Clearly he has had a very successful career – orchestrating for Danny Elfman, Jerry Goldsmith, you name it, massive projects over the last few decades – and as composer, a much shorter list of films but each and every one of them is a gem in some way or another. I’ve literally never heard anything he’s written that I haven’t liked. Back in the 1990s he showed that he could score anything – the action-packed Frank and Jesse shows a side to him that people more familiar with his extremely warm-hearted music in the majority of his projects may not know was there.

He is very choosy about the type of film that he scores. One of my favourites by him – and indeed my favourite Christmas-themed film music of all, I think – is Blizzard, a film by LeVar Burton about a reindeer. Prancer: A Christmas Tale is directed by Phil Hawkins and stars James Cromwell as a widowed grandfather whose enthusiasm for life is in a ditch – until the light is shone for him by another reindeer, all accompanied by the magical tones of Mark McKenzie. (For the record: the film got my daughter’s seal of approval.)

This is a very different type of score from Blizzard – that one all-out orchestral adventures, this one much more intimate. But one thing in common – and this was never in any particular doubt – is the warmth that emanates, the heart that runs through the whole thing. There’s a pair of main themes which anchor the whole thing, and listening to any of the variants on either of them makes me sit and wonder if the great Georges Delerue has graced us with his presence one last time: the seemingly-effortless lightness of touch (which of course would not have been effortless at all), the instantly-memorable tunes, the smiles sure to form on the face of anyone hearing them.

Sadly there was no budget for an orchestra so McKenzie has to rely largely on samples (I assume the piano which carries a lot of the melodies is real, along with a couple of winds – the recorder solos another reminder of Delerue). He skilfully manoeuvers around any restrictions this may have brought and frankly most of the time you forget about it.

From the gentle materials, the composer extracts great emotional weight – the whole thing is shot through with such charm, the music continually enforcing the family ties that seem in the film, on the surface at least, to be broken. It isn’t easy to do this sort of thing without descending into schmaltz, but this composer does it time and time again. There are occasionally some more comic moments – often with pizzicato strings – but for the most part we have the warmest of tunes played by piano or wind solos with fairly subtle (sampled) orchestral accompaniment, at times soaring away with festive spirit.

There’s a lot of darkness around the world. Those who love music – and thankfully, most people love music – can often find some partial respite in it. It is hard to imagine anyone’s day not being brightened by listening to this album – and really, is there any greater compliment I could give? From start to finish, whether weaving variants on his own themes together, or occasionally interpolating some classic Christmas tunes, this is an absolute treat, a Christmas gift to us all.