Christmas Eve: Music to explore

Christmas music: it comes in forms and styles and ways to lsiten that are as many and varied as the ornaments on your tree. Christmas music, like those ornaments, can be old or recent, familer or waiting for new memories to be made, sparkling or quiet, funny or serious.

This Christmas, here are several suggestions that bring in aspects of all this:

Andrew Finn Magill chose pre-twentieth century music for his instrumental album Christmas Carols for Violin & Guitar. He plays both the violin and the guitar on the ten tracks, which come from well know pieces including Deck the Halls and Silent Night as well as less widely known ones such as Pois que dos Reys Nostro Sennor. Magill has backgrounds in Celtic and Appalachian music, as well as in jazz and in the musics of his adopted home of Brazil. This music well suited for both reflection and inspiration.

Reflection and inspiration make part of each of the recordings here. Humor often comes along too, gentle humor of the sort that opens connections, that is.

Some years back, Tish Hinojosa released a Christmas album that’s long gone out of print. A song she wrote for it, two songs really, as there are versions in both English and Spanish, have remained most requested parts of her holiday season shows, as they have to do with her annual conversations with her Christmas Tree. When Hinjosa decided to make a new holiday album, she knew those had to be included, along with new material and several other favorites from the past. She chose the title from one of the newly included songs, From Texas for a Christmas Night. Through the music on it, Hinojosa readily evokes not often heard aspects of Lone Star State Christmas time.

Emily Smith’s home ground is the southwest too -- the southwest of Scotland in her case. Her album Songs for Christmas s comprises well known carols, less widely known songs from Scotland, several contemporary songs and fine originals. There’s her quiet Winter Song and thoighful Find Hope, along with Little Road to Bethlehem, Silent Night, and other songs. Smith and her musical partner and husband Jamie McClennan have devised creative and fresh arrangements that serve the spirit and stories of the songs.

That is also true of Matt and Shannon Heaton’s recording Fine Winter’s Night . On it they offer song and tune in service of the season, original and traditional music based in Irish tradition, respecting its past while making music that speaks to present day listeners. Matt’s original story fo a Victorian Christmas, First Snowfall of December, stnads well beside O Little Town of Bethlehem. Shannon’s title track, Fine Winter’s Night, gracefully speaks of contrasts of the season; there’s also a piece about an unsung (until Shannon wrote the song, anyway) hero of Christmas; I’ll let you listen to the album to learn more about that. Then there’s this, in which the duo re imagined an African American song with an Irish touch. The chorus seems especially appropriate for this Christmas. Take a listen.

There are many more fine Christmas albums, of course -- I’d point you to Joy for Christmas Day by Kathy Mattea, Cara Dillon, Cherish the Ladies, and Tim Edey just for starters.

May this music be good companion to you as the festive season unfolds.

You may also wish to see
Winter’s Gifts: Music here at Music Road
Music for Starry Winter Nights at Wandering Educators
Christmas Eve, Reflections, and Travel at Perceptive Travel

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