C. Michael Bailey's Holiday Bundle 2025

Holiday music in the twenty-first century embraces both the old and new with equal creative consideration. Without a new recording of Handel's Messiah, we must rely on the inevitable evolution of the Christmas Canon.

Cincinnati Contemporary Jazz Orchestra
The Nutcracker Remix
Self Produced
2025

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's The Nutcracker has been a holiday staple since 1892. The ballet has a long history of jazz adaptations, beginning with Les Brown and His Band of Renown's Nutcracker Suite (Coral, 1958) arranged by Frank Comstock. Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn followed with their version (Columbia, 1960), as did Shorty Rogers and His Giants with The Swingin' Nutcracker (RCA Victor 1960). Wynton Marsalis and the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra later reinterpreted the Ellington/Strayhorn arrangements in their concert performance, "Nutcracker Swing." The Cincinnati Contemporary Jazz Orchestra released The Nutcracker Remix, featuring nine pieces from the ballet plus three 20th-century holiday classics. The University of Cincinnati College Conservatory of Music faculty members Scott Belck and LeAnne Anklan founded the ensemble in 2013. Band director Rob Parton created The Nutcracker Remix, inspired by the Ellington/Strayhorn arrangements.

To modernize the work, Parton enlisted artistic director Eric Lechliter and trombonist/arranger Dominic Marino to incorporate diverse world jazz subtypes, opening the pieces stylistically. Cleverly conceived and named (the arrangers following Ellington with whimsical re-titles), this is a "Nutcracker" for a new age. The familiar Overture is initially telegraphed sans musical vowels as a shorthand that is fleshed out as the piece progresses. "The Pistachio March" ("March of the Toy Soldiers") is introduced with clinical astringency before being liberated in the arrangement into a full-blown big-band feature (featuring a flugelhorn solo by Ralph Sisylvestro). The disc highlights are "Sugar Rush" ("Dance of the Sugarplum Fairy"), "General Tso's Gumbo" ("Chinese Dancers"), and a searing nine-minute "Merry Christmas, Baby" with vocalist Mandy Gaines lighting the torch.

Chanticleer
Joy To The World
Delos
2025

The San Francisco all-male choral ensemble Chanticleer and Christmas have had a fruitful relationship, the group having already produced nine holiday-related albums, including the superlative We Sing Christmas (Teldec, 1995). The group continues to divine inspiration from the Christmas season with Joy To The World.

The holiday canon, both secular and spiritual, is by now well trodden upon by many ensembles. While room remains for the undiscovered and expansion through appropriation, the popular trend is to drill deep, reimagining the old songs melodically, harmonically, and lyrically. Notable re-workings include countertenor Adam Brett Ward's arrangement of "Joy To The World," bass-baritone Jerad Graveley's re-thinking of "Once in Royal David's City," and musical director Tim Keeler's vision of "I Wonder As I Wander." Keeler also arranged the little-known Appalachian folk song, "And the Trees Do Moan," revealing its bright charm here to many for the first time. Graveley returns to mash-up "Good King Wenceslas" with "Little Girl Blue" in one of the most inspired performances on the disc.

Commissioned for Chanticleer is Joanna Marsh and Jan Dracott's triptych "Winter's Garland," which thematically explores the winter light and wonder of the season. The ensemble embraces the contemporary flair of the compositions, introducing us to newer additions to the holiday songbook. Warmly captured and genuinely delivered, Joy to the World expands the holiday discography admirably.

English Baroque Soloists, Monteverdi Choir, Christophe Rousset, cond.
Charpentier: Baroque Christmas
SDG
2025

After more than 40 years under the baton of Sir John Eliot Gardiner, the English Baroque Soloists and Monteverdi Choir have a new director in French harpsichordist/conductor Christophe Rousset, who has had a distinguished career on both sides of the podium. Rousset pays tribute to French Baroque composer Marc-Antoine Charpentier with an impressive survey of his Christmas music, well-known and lesser-known.

Alongside the composer's sacred pieces, "In nativitatem Domini canticum" and his exquisite Mass, "Messe de minuit pour Noël," are a series of folk French noëls, secular Christmas carols (Noël sur les instruments) forbidden at that time by edict of the Council of Trent. This did not bother Charpentier, and these seasonal songs capture its winter splendor.

Rousset has the band and chorus well tuned and in fine fettle as they navigate this old music, resurrecting it among its better-known German and Italian offerings. The sonics are as warm and spacious as a cup of nog. The performers give measured and emotive performances, providing a welcome change to the traditional German-centric Baroque Christmas. Rousset, bringing his vast experience, expertly handles Gardiner's creations. Can we hope for a new "Messiah" next?

The Sixteen, Harry Christophers
The Wise Men and the Star
Coro
2025

Like Chanticleer—and, indeed, all specialized a cappella choirs—The Sixteen, founded and led by Harry Christophers, has recorded multiple Christmas-related albums, ranging from the earliest sacred music to that of the 20th and 21st centuries. It is in this latter period that Christophers uses The Wise Men and the Star to concentrate his efforts. Contained is Yuletide music rarely recognized as such, ranging from the premieres of three new arrangements of traditional carols ("Away In a Manger" and "In the Bleak Midwinter"), and modern classics such as Eric Whitacre's "Lux aurumque" and Mykola Leontovich's setting of "Carol of the Bells."

Re-framing the old reveals the new. The near-annual holiday release from The Sixteen is a special treat for many listeners, and the ensemble's programs endeavor to innovate and recast the established canon. Rubbing shoulders with traditional carols like "Deck the Halls" and "The Wexford Carol," is music by Jeremy Dibble, Reena Esmail, Oliver Tarney, Eric Whitacre, Bernard Rose, and many more. There is a certain Anglo-centric character to this release with competing arrangements of "Tomorrow Will Be My Dancing Day," a beautiful setting by Holst of "In The Bleak Midwinter," and Leontovich's provocative new arrangement of "Carol of the Bells." This is holiday music at its most inspired, cerebral best. Christmas never sounded so good.

Concordian Dawn
Veni Redemptor Gentium
Avie
2025

"These are shadows of the past that hold a mirror to our present..."

In 2012, Christopher Preston Thompson founded the medieval music ensemble Concordian Dawn in New York City. Besides being the artistic director of the group, Thompson is also the tenor voice, musicologist, and historical harpist of the ensemble. Together, the group specializes in 12th-through 14th-century vocal repertoire, drawing on primary source material. Thompson adds the goal of using this music to compare the ancient religious mindset and mores with those proffered today. Christmas music celebrates a singular event (be it historic or apocryphal), which people may experience as directly spiritual or as a celebration of heritage.

The repertoire includes many rarely heard songs, seasoned with new compositions in the old style. The recording's title piece and spiritual center, "Veni, redemptor gentium," is from a fourth-century hymn by St. Ambrose (c. 339—397 CE) set as a Sarum chant for the first vespers of the Nativity, musically notated in the 16th century but likely sung with this melody much earlier. Interspersed among these old songs are modern imaginings by medieval musician scholars like "This Holy Tym Oure Lord Was Born" by harpist David Yardley, who also contributed "Vox Clamantis in Deserto." Most of the music has no known composer, making it that much more precious for having been rescued from some dusty and forgotten archive. Named composers include Pérotin (1160—1230) and Guillaume Dufay (1397—1474), music well homogeneous with the recital.

This is music at the dawn of notated European art music. It is not beautiful in the way of plainchant on its way to medieval polyphony. It is beautiful in its organic simplicity and pure heart.

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