December Songs

December Songs is a song cycle by Maury Yeston, best known as a musical theatre songwriter responsible for the music and lyrics for Nine, Titanic and part of Grand Hotel. The work is a 'retelling' of Franz Schubert's Winterreise, (a song cycle of art songs), with a cabaret sensibility. The songs in both December Songs and Winterreise are linked as a sequence of reflections by the singer taking a lonely walk in winter, thinking back on his or her lost love. The piece crosses over the line from classical music to Broadway to cabaret.

The work was written as a commissioned piece for the 1991 centennial celebration of New York's Carnegie Hall, where it was performed by cabaret singer Andrea Marcovicci It was then performed for three months in 2004 at the Theatre du Renard in Paris, where it was sung by Isabelle Georges. It has been recorded in English by Marcovicci and Georges, in German by Pia Douwes and in French by Georges.