Advent and music: first week in Advent

Advent: a time os ideas, a time of change....

Whether this season is part of your faith calendar or not, this time at turning of season and turning of year is a good time to reflect.

It may be challenging to pause, perhaps even more so to find interior silence in which to do that reflection.

Music makes a good gateway into reflection.

Though there’s plenty of great seasonal music about, if that’s not what engages you, there are other possibilities too.

Several ideas to consider

Lauren MacColl is a fiddle player and composer based in the north of Scotland. Her album Haar is not seasonal music. It is. however, a collection of thoughtful pieces which make good companions for quiet thinking.

MacColl is joined by musical friends including Rachel Newton on harp and spoken word, Anna Massie on guitar, James Lindsay on double bass, Mairearad Green on accordion, Jennifer Austin on pianos, and Alice Allen on cello. Their collaboration gives added interest and depth, which along with MacColl’s stellar playing, invites repeated listening.

The Lonesome Chronicles from The Kathy Kallick Band takes things in a bit of a different direction. Kallick is an award winning singer, songwriter and guitarist based in northern California; her band memebrs are based all across the US west.

When they get together, it is powerful music they make. For The Lonesome Chronicles, as the title suggests there are songs that consider being lonely and ways of living through that and learning from it.

The album takes listeners on a journey, really, from those considerations of coping with being lonely to celebrating coming out of it ). There are both songs and tunes, a well rounded collection with original music from Kallick and her band members along side well chosen covers of music from William Golden, Earl Scruggs, and John Prine.

For seasonal music, as Advent begins take time to explore three winter seasonal albums from the top Irish American band Cherish the Ladies.

On Christmas Night, Star in the East, and Christmas in Ireland find the group offering varying modds in song and tune, from traditional to original pieces. Heidi Talbot is lead singer for On Christmas Night, Michelle Lee Burke has that role for Star in the East, and Hannah Rarity is lead singer for Christmas in Ireland.

Flute and whistles from band leader and founding member Joanie Madden and guitar from founding member Mary Coogan are creative presences on all the albums, with keys from Kathleen Boyle, accordion from Mirella Murray, and fiddle from Nollaig Casey making part of the mix too.

Each of these albums is well worth taking time with at the winter holidays.

Also to explore: Cherish have put together a digital holiday album with tracks from these albums and other sources featuring Cherish the Ladies with guest singers Heidi Talbot, Hannah Rarity, Don Stiffe, Kate Purcell, Michelle Burke, Bruce Foley, and Seámus Ó'Flatharta. It is called Ultimate Christmas Mix and you can find it on Bandcamp.

...and look for the album Christmas, from Cherish the Ladies founding member and guitarist Mary Coogan.

More to come on music to listen to during Advent as the season unfolds...

You may also wish to see
More ideas for music for the first week in Advent, from a few years back
Music for Starry Winter NIghts at Wandering Educators, with a track from On Christmas Nigh form Cherish the Ladies along with music from Andrew Finn Magill, Matt and Shannon Heaton and more
One More Christmas from Austin based musicians Christine Albert and Chris Gage
Learn about Through Wind and Rain, a recording from Cathie Ryan, who was lead singer with Cherish the Ladies for many years co

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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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Winter's gifts: Music

Winter: it’s a time for reflection, for contemplation, for spending time in solitude and for seeking out good company. Music is a part of all this, and it also makes a fine gift. Here are ideas as you plan your holiday listening and giving. Some of these albums and artists you have met here before along the music road, and for others, there’s more to come. Either way, follow the links to learn more of the music.

If you’ve someone on your list or if you yourself love the music of Scotland, then Karen Matheson’s solo album Urram< will fill a spot on your list. It is the first solo album Matheson has released in some time -- she’s often involved with her work as part of the band Capercaillie. She was working on an album of contemporary songs in English and Gaelic but found the deaths of her parents, and coming across family photographs from times past in the wake of that, turned her in another direction. The songs of Urram are in Gaelic, some Matheson would have known from her childhood, others that she searched out in song archives. Spare arrangements from longtime band mates as well as unexpected guests frame Matheson’s musical storytelling.

Jenna Moynihan draws on the music of Scotland as well, both music from the tradition and as source to frame her own compositions. Growing up in New York state, two years into studying violin at eight years of age Moynihan encountered the fiddle music of Scotland, and that set her on her musical path one she has followed thus far all the way up through a degree at Berklee College of Music and the release of her album Woven, It’s a fine collection, comprising music that shows both Moynihan’s lyrical touch as well as flashes of wit -- which you may also see in her descriptions of the tunes in her liner notes. It is a journey worth the taking al the way through the album as it’s been been sequenced by Moynihan and producer Maeve Gilchrist. For a hint of what’s in store, standout tracks include the Kendall Tavern set, Haven, and Dolina MacKay.

Oisin Mac Diarmada knows the fiddle, too. In his case the background is Ireland, and in his recording The Green Branch the music of the Sligo region. You’ll have met Mac Diarmada’s music though his work in the band Teada, in his duo recordings with Seamus Begley, and with his Irish Christmas in America projects. For The Green Branch his musical partner is Samantha Harvey, whose piano work proves a fine backing and at times rhythm section for the energy of Oisin’s fiddle as he makes his way through sets of jigs, reels, hornpipes, and flings, including Jacke Coleman’s paired with Mayor Harrison’s Fedora and Bright May Morning paired with Fowler on the Moor. Harvey’s first way into irish music (she is originally from America, now resident in Ireland) was through irish dance, and a particularly engaging set, Veronica McNamara’s/The Professor/Charlie Dolan’s, includes the sound of her dancing feet along with fiddle and piano.

Alison Brown’s instrument of choice is the banjo. In her mind and spirit and hands it’s an adventurous instrument, melodic more than percussive, part of an ensemble more often than claiming the sole spotlight. On her album Song of the Banjo her original pieces are most composed for an acoustic ensemble, with deft placing of the colors of instruments to tell the stories she has in mind. That’s true of the varied selection of covers as well including several in which she backs singers in re invented versions of songs from writers as varied as Michael Martin Murphey, Bacharach and David, and (on the deluxe edition of the album) Marvin Gaye. If you’ve heard Brown’s tone and an voice (so to speak) with the banjo you’ll recognize it through the tracks on Song of the Banjo; if you are new to her work, listen and follow it as the thread that pulls through.

There will be more to come on these recordings and artists here along the music road, but they are too good to have you miss out on them during this season of listening, sharing, and giving.

Season of giving, you say? What about some seasonal music? Of course...

With her Quartet, the aforementioned Alison Brown has a fine seasonal album called Evergreen. There’s a nice blending of Carol of the Bells with We Three Kings, and Two Santas comprises two Santa themed songs you’l recognize. There’s a livley reinvention of The Little Drummer Boy among the other gems.

For On Christmas Night from Cherish the Ladies Heidi Talbot handles lead singing for The Castle of Dromore, a song that always evokes winter for me. Talbot makes the often done over the top O Holy Night sound as welcoming as if it were done around the fireside. too. Excellent instrumentals led by Joanie Madden’s flute, among them the title track, Old Apples in Winter, and the Kerry Reel, weave in stories and sound of Ireland with the carols and songs of the season

Speaking of the flute...you will hear some fine flute playing from Shannon Heaton on the album Fine Winter's Night which she’s done with her husband, guitar player Matt Heaton. They each sing, too, and they each have original songs of the season, tunes and carols and contemporary pieces. Listen out especially for Matt’s original First Snow Fall of December, Shannon’s title song, and their takes on the Wexford Carol and It Came Upon the Midnight Clear.

You may also wish to see
Another Fine Winter's Night: Matt & Shannon Heaton
6 of the best Christmas Songs
Music for the first week in Advent: candle in the window

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Listening to Christmas: Celtic artists tell their favorite winter holiday music

Those who make music for their work enjoy music of the winter holidays as much as those who are in their audiences.

Tommy Sands thinks of the connections music makes, Heidi Talbot is enjoying sharing holiday music with her friends on stage and her young daughter at home, and Cathie Ryan has an album that she finds to be good company as background for holiday gatherings as well as for quiet reflection by the fireside.

take a listen to what Tommy, Heidi, Cathie, and others have to say about how they enjoy music at the holidays by following the links to these holiday articles:

listening to Christmas: Aoife Clancy, Tommy Sands, Matt Heaton
listening to Christmas: Heidi Talbot, Muireann Nic Amhlaoibh, Patty Larkin
listening to Christmas: Shannon Heaton, Cathie Ryan, Mary Black, Hanneke Cassel

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Song of Solstice: music for changing seasons

What is the sound of seasons changing? It could be what you hear as you listen to Song of Solstice from Jennifer Cutting’s Ocean Orchestra.

With a gathering of music from Celtic traditions along with songs she’s written, Cutting offers a vision of that which invites contemplation and celebration, consideration of darkness and light in both spiritual and natural realms that accompanies the turn of earth’s time from autumn through winter and back to spring again. To do this, she weaves in strands of musical ideas from Celtic to classical to steampunk, and creates a sound that’s immediately inviting.

Drawing on the gifts of artists from her own Ocean Orchestra as well as a range of guests, many of them from the thriving Washington DC area music scene, Cutting offers complex and layered arrangements which serve the music and open new ways of hearing it. Complex does not mean stuffy or hard to understand: there’s a very good chance you’ll be singing along with several of the pieces, and that the music will stay in your mind long after you've played the recording.

Song of Solstice, the title track, offers a rousing take on celebrating the joys of the colder seasons of the year, and gives a nod to wisdom to be gained from contemplation and patience in the calendar’s darker seasons. As well there's an affirmation of the joys of friendship, whose gifts are often strengthened by winter’s connections. Christmas Day in the Morning, a traditional tune from Shetland set as a quiet instrumental with harp from Sue Richards and bodhran from Myron Bretholz, leads into Song of Solstice, a paring which enhances both.

Green Man is another piece you’ll not forget, a lively song whose origins Cutting drew from ancient Celtic tales as well as ideas that appear in the story of King Arthur. You do not have to know anything about either of those, though, to enjoy Steve Winnick’s cheerful and inviting lead vocal. He is backed by Highland bagpipes, bouzouki, electric guitar, fiddle, bodhran, other percussion instruments, and vocal harmony. Turning of seasons, death and rebirth, and the vibrancy of nature in the midst of winter are just a few of the things touched upon in the song, which offers a fine mood and beat for dancing and drumming as well as for singing.

Time to Remember the Poor suggests a different avenue for contemplation. Gothic steam punk psychedelia fusion is what Cutting had in mind. The words are from a Victorian era broadside, set to a haunting soundscape of voice, guitar, keyboard, samples, bass, and drums, It all seems quite contemporary yet evokes the the atmosphere of Victorian times and the thoughts in the lyrics as well. Lisa Mosciatello is the voice, Al Petteway plays electric and acoustic guitars, Juan Dudley is the drummer, Rico Petrocelli plays bass, and Cutting provides the samples and plays keyboards on the piece.

Putting classic, folk -- especially Celtic -- and rock ideas in conversation and collaboration with each other is a a way of approaching music which has long interested Cutting. For ten years she was bandleader for the award winning Washington DC area based British folk rock group The New Saint George. Later, Jennifer founded The Ocean Orchestra, which has allowed her to take her composing, arranging, and performing ideas of creating music drawing on varied genres in a more Celtic direction, and to invite in the talents of changing casts of musicians in the United States and overseas. “Celtic music for ancient moderns” is how she describes her work.

“I think of myself as a soundscape architect -- I try to get the structures and textures from my imagination out onto the recorded sound canvas, with the help of many amazingly gifted people who all add their own genius into the mix, “ Cutting says. “Creating a song or an arrangement is a lot like putting up a building or designing a landscape, except that my materials are instruments and voices. Hearing it build layer by layer is the ultimate thrill.”

Listening to the result is fascinating, too. Song of Solstice includes six originals by Jennifer Cutting, and varied other works, among them pieces from Celtic tradition including music from France and from Shetland. As with a well designed building or landscape, all the elements enhance each other and invite repeated exploration.

Listen to excerpts from Song of Solstice


photograph of Jennifer Cutting by Irene Young

you may also wish to see
Music Road: Another Fine Winter's Night: Matt & Shannon Heaton
Music Road: Oceans & Journeys: Road Trip in Maryland
Music Road: late summer, early autumn, music, Ireland

If you enjoy what you’ve been reading here, a way to support more of it:

Celebrate the season with music

celebrate the season with music -- as these small singers are doing in Cambridge, Massachusetts

follow these links to read more on ideas to help you do that

Music Road: Eileen Ivers: Christmas tour & album

Music Road: Cherish The Ladies: A Star in the East

Music Road: trilogy: 2000 Years of Christmas

Music Road: Gretchen Peters: Northern Lights

Music Road: A Tejano Country Christmas

and you may also wish to read about what your favorite artists are listening to this time of year
Music Road: listening to Christmas: Heidi Talbot, Muireann Nic Amhlaoibh, Patty Larkin

Music Road: listening to Christmas: Aoife Clancy, Tommy Sands, Matt Heaton

and visit
Delicious Baby's Photo Friday, where travelers offer new insights to the world each Friday.

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Eileen Ivers: Christmas tour & album

Eileen Ivers has long been interested in places where music and culture intersect, how the beats and rhythms of the world’s many musics connect and combine and relate to the Irish traditional music that is the center of her work. When it comes to Christmas time, it is to that center she returns. “My parents grew up in Mayo, in the west of Ireland,” she says, “ and we used to go back there , and just hang out with the grandparents . We were so blessed to have that sort of childhood, that connection.” Ivers grew up in the Bronx, in New York, where she started playing the fiddle at age eight, and has followed that interest across the world. She was a founding member of the internationally renown band Cherish the Ladies and a star of Riverdance, as well as performing with rock stars and symphony orchestras. Those experiences of other musics have both deepened and broadened her interests and abilities in Irish music. That’s a line of thought she brings to her Christmas shows, and to her holiday recording, An Nollaig. "There is so much joy in the season. I wanted to bring that out to welcome listeners in," Ivers says. "Just like ornaments on a Christmas tree, some of the tunes in An Nollaig have been lovingly passed down through the generations, and some are new." That’s a combination which engages both musicians and listeners during the holiday shows. “I love it when they begin to sing along, or to clap and stamp in the fast pieces,” she says. “ There’s just such a great cycle going between us on the stage and the audience when that happens.” That’s sure to happen at the gigs as Ivers and her musical compatriots make their way across the country this holiday season. Whether or not you’ll be able to see the show (and it is an evening not to be missed), you can share in the good cheer and the music through the recording An Nollaig. On it you will find reels and jigs from the tradition, Susan McKeown singing Don Oiche Ud i MBeithill/ One Night in Bethlehem, a song from Denmark, the carol Do You hear What I Hear? and Jesu Joy of Man’s Desiring, Bach with an Irish twist. It is an album that will quickly become part of your holiday celebration as well, and all the more reason to catch the musicians on tour this holiday season. The tour dates run from Alabama to California to Colorado to Vermont through the month of December. Check for the one nearest you at Eileen Ivers' tour schedule page. you may also wish to see Music Road: Cherish The Ladies: A Star in the East Eileen Ivers: Wild Blue Music Road: autumn & Thanksgiving listening, continued

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6 of the best Christmas Songs

Six tradtional and original songs for reflecting on Advent and Christmas. Though several of these songs may be familiar, you'll not have heard them quite in the way these artists do them here. Check out the albums beyond these songs, too.





It Came Upon a Midnight Clear Cathie Ryan Narada Presents: The Best of Celtic Christmas

The Coventry Carol Gretchen Peters Northern Lights

Straw Against the Chill Kathy Mattea Joy for Christmas Day

The Castle of Dromore Heidi Talbot with Cherish the Ladies On Christmas Night

A la Nanita Nana Tish Hinojosa From Texas for a Christmas Night

Fine Winter’s Night Matt and Shannon Heaton
Fine Winter's Night



you may also want to see

Music Road: Gretchen Peters: Northern Lights

Music Road: holiday gift list: Irish music

Music Road: winter music

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Austin Holiday stroll coming up

Downtown Austin Alliance's Holiday Stroll is a really lovely and very musical event. Carol singing at the Capitol steps, loads of shops and people and all sorts of music along the way, and by the time you get as far as La Pena and Mexic Arte, a bit more of the Hispanic tradition kicking in. Anywhere you join in along Congress, though, it's a fine holiday evening.

Here's this year's plan, courtesy of the Austin Music Alliance.

Saturday, December 5


6:00-7:00 pm: Holiday Sing-Along
south steps of the Capitol

7:00 pm: Capitol Christmas Tree Lighting
south gates of the Capitol

7:00 - 9:00 pm: Holiday Stroll on Congress Avenue

Congress Avenue will be buzzing with holiday cheer during the Congress Avenue Stroll. Shops, restaurants, galleries and museums will be open late and will feature special activities, offers or refreshments to visitors.


photo of the Capitol in Austin and the Texas Tree all in lights by Kerry Dexter

music to go along with these ideas

Music Road: Jeff Talmadge : At Least That Much Was True

Music Road: A Tejano Country Christmas

Music Road: Albert & Gage: One More Christmas

for a range of interesting posts, visit
Delicious Baby's Photo Friday

Fourth of july and music, 2009

It’s the fourth of July. Whether that’s your holiday or not -- about half of those who join us along the music road come from the United States, and about half from other parts of the world -- I hope you’ll join in a mood of celebration and reflection, and while you are doing that, take a look at these thoughts:

from the fourth of July last year
Music Road: now playing: Angels Unaware

music and politics
Music Road: listening through the changes

music and connection
Music Road: creative practice: being there


take guess...
Music Road: creative practice: laughter

celebrate! Wilderness Plots has been nominated for an Emmy. congratulations and good wishes to all involved
Music Road: Wilderness Plots: the dvd

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Alison Brown Quartet: Evergreen

Evergreen



Alison Brown likes to make music that doesn’t fit any precise categories. That’s what she and her fellow players in the Alison Brown Quartet do with seasonal materrial for the winter holidays, too. The result is music that’s both familiar and new, welcoming and challenging, and is likely to have listeners both enjoying it with quiet thouhgtfulness and laughing in surprise and delight.

Brown’s chosen instrument is the banjo, and here she brings that in conversation with bass from Garry West, fiddle and mandolin from Joe Craven, drums from Davisd Heyer, and piano from John R. Burr.

They take on both sacred and secular tunes.On the jazzy side, there’s Skating form Vince Guaraldi paired with a rockin’ version of Feliz Navidad, while a Celtic tune first written for the harp meets Dr.Seuss at O’Carolan’s/Welcome Christmas. You can almost see the snow sparkle as the quartet has fun with Sleigh Ride, and Christmas Time Is Here shows another side of how they think about the season, joined by the voices of students from the university School of Nashville’s Middle School Chorale. The ABQ rounds out the set with The Little Drummer. It’s a fine wintery mix that needn’t be put away when holiday celebrations are done.

you may also like

Music Road: now playing: NewGrange: Christmas Heritage

Music Road: Gretchen Peters: Northern Lights

Music Road: listening to Christmas

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Trilogy: 2000 Years of Christmas

Eileen McGann, David K, and Cathy Smith are all Canadian musicians with fine and flourishing careers. Sometimes, they join up for a series of holiday shows, and one year tpey out this on record, calling their group Trilogy and the recording 2000 Years of Christmas. Both humor and sadness, ancient hymns and the Grinchnew world celebrations and old world customs come into play in this thoughtful, engaging collection. The three offer some knock out three and two part harmony, too, as well as each taking the lead on several songs. There are hymns and carols, such as O Magnum Mysterium and The Huron Carol, contemporary pieces such as Christmas in the Trenches, and some very fine originals, including McGann’s Turn It Around and the hilarious Snow Shanty.



one place to find out more is
McGann's website. The Irish Canadian songwirter is
pictured at left.

you may also like

Music Road: Gretchen Peters: Northern Lights

Music Road: now playing: Best of Celtic Christmas

Gretchen Peters: Northern Lights

Northern lights

The winter holdays, Advent, and Chrstmastide may incluse, among other things, wonder at the miracle of the incarnation, warm embraces from family, greetings from friends familiar and long lost, strangers becoming friends as they wait in lines, sing carols together, marvel at holiday lights and share laughter amid the hurry of the season, and moments, sought after or not, when the joys and sorrows of the season are framed in time spent alone. Gretchen Peters’ view of Christmas on her album Northern Lights arises from those moments of solitary contemplation. That sounds as though it’s a reflective set of music, and it is. What you might not expect from that description is that it is also an album filled with joy of the season, occasionally funny, always thoughtful, entirely musical, and filled with peace.

It will not surprise those who know Peters as the writer of mainstream country hits such as You Don’t Even Know Who I Am, Water Into Wine, and Independence Day, to learn that she knows that solitude, connection, and peace all require courage and faith, whatever the source of that faith and whatever the season.

Peters opens the album with Song for a Winter’s Night, a many faceted look at coping with being alone and missing someone at the holiday season, from Canadian writer Gordon Lightfoot. This moves into The Coventry Carol, a traditional song based on a lullabye, which connects with the ideas in Peters own December Child, a mother’s thoughts looking forward from the manger and back to that moment of Christ as a baby child.

Connecting these two through the sequence on the recording is the Appalachian carol I Wonder As I Wander, which in Peters’ take moves from question to affirmation. There’s a jazzy, funny melding of music from Vince Guaraldi (think Charlie Brown’s Christmas) and Angels We Have Heard on High, entirely in spirit of both songs.

In another inspired bit of sequencing, Waitin’ on Mary, also a song Peters has written, stands next to In the Bleak Midwinter. Waitin’ on Mary speaks of the Holy Family searching for rest and a home, and of people who still find no home and no welcome. “Far away on some dark hill, there are faithful waiting still, who have no hope but still believe...” Peters sings. Midwinter is a traditional song of learning how to give, how to worship, and how to find a place to do that.

You’ll find similar wisdom, and hope, and joy, in the other songs, including the title track, Northern Lights, which Peters also wrote, and Careful How You Go, written by Kim Richey and Will Kimbrough, both of which gracefully hold the essence of winter, wonder, solitude, and stillness. There's also Christmas Time Is Here, from Vince Guaraldi, and the bleoved carol Silent Night.

If you're reading this in October, or November, or even December, and thinking, this has been a hard year, I don’t want to think about the holidays yet -- yes, you do. This music is a good companion for your journey.

Peters is better known as a writer than as a singer (at least in the US -- audiences in the UK and Europe seem to have caught on to her ability as a performer), but she is a very fine one, and her clear soprano has never sounded better or more soulful than it does here. She produced the album along with Barry Walsh, who offers inspired work on piano, organ, and accordion. Suzy Bogguss and Matraca Berg sit in for quiet harmony vocals on Waitin’ on Mary, while David Henry, Doug Lancio, Dave Francis, and Will Kimbrough also join in on various tracks. Part of the proceeds from Northern Lights will be given to Room at the Inn, a Nashville based group which assists the homeless.

You may also want to see A track from Gretchen Peters' 2022 release The Show:Live from the UK is part of this story at Wandering Educators. Gretchen Peters : Burnt Toast & Offerings Barry Walsh : the crossing listening to Christmas

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now playing: Ottmar Liebert: Christmas + Santa Fe

Guitarist Ottmar Liebert's mix of classical and pop music background as well as his long residence in the American southwest fuse in his interpretation of familiar holiday songs. In Christmas + Santa Fe Liebert mixes familiar pieces including Hark the Herald Angels sing with his own Canyon Road on Christmas Eve, while Deck the Halls becomes the jumping off point for Santa Dancing. Festive and seasonal in the sense of the winter season, it makes good listening for the holiday atmosphere and the creative music. It's a fine bit of holiday themed music which can move easily from foregraound to background as the holiday occasion requires, too.

Listening to Christmas

The crunch of snow under my boots high in the Sangre de Cristo mountains of northern New Mexico, the clear blue sky through the piney wood hills of north Florida, the wild winds and cold rain of the east and west coasts of Ireland, the chill cold fronts of New England, the leaves swirling along the rainy streets of Nashville, and the ever changing weather of central Texas in December: these have all been part of my holiday landscape at one time another. Here is some of the music which has traveled with me on those journeys.

Kathy Mattea has two holiday albums, Good News and Joy for Christmas Day. You’ll not be finding dancing snowmen, wassailing, or reindeer run amok here.

Mattea, however, shows that songs of reverence and faith are every bit as engaging, enduring, and beautiful, and sometimes as funny, too, as any secular Christmas work. Both albums include traditional and contemporary songs; Good News is perhaps a bit quieter, while Joy has, on occasion, more instruments and percussive rhythms. On News, in Mary Did You Know? the singer considers the mother’s thoughts of future and past looking at her just born son, questions sure to move anyone who has held a small child, much anyone who has raised one. Good News, the title track, is a well imagined bit of harmony that resonates all the more clearly for its simplicity. On Joy, Mattea and her band have good fun with Gather member Marc Cohn’s Baby King and show an understanding of understated grace with their take on Bob Franke’s Straw Against the Chill.

Western skies and border memories infuse Tish Hinojosa’s From Texas for a Christmas Night. It’s a mix of songs from Memorabilia Navidena, a collection she did some years back, with recently recorded music, including the graceful title track and a song honoring Chanukah. There’s her reimagining of the Christ child as a young girl in the barrio in Building Number 9, and a pair of songs often requested at the singer’s holiday concerts, Arbolito. Those recount, in English and Spanish, a quick trip through her yearly chats with her Christmas tree. Whether you know Spanish or not, you’ll be singing along with the joy filled Milagro, and be inspired by the the quiet journey of the holy family seeking a place for the night in A la Nanita Nana, a traditional song often sung in Hispanic communities as that journey is re enacted.

Though it’s from a completely different part of the Mexican American song universe,
The Best of Tejano Country Christmas is also well worth your musical time, even though you’ll likely find it in the bargain bin. It’s Freddy Fender, Joel Nava, La Differenzia and others on songs in English and Spanish including Noche de Paz, Frosty el Snowman, and Christmas Time in Texas.

Two very different yet related sounds of Christmas in the southwestern US come from R.Carlos Nakai and William Eaton, who collaborate on Native flute and guitar to offer traditional holiday music which yet suggests western skies for Winter Dreams and from from guitarist Ottmar Liebert. On Christmas + Santa Fe he interweaves familiar holiday music with original riffs and compositions those sounds, and living in Santa Fe, suggest to him. Al Petteway and Amy White suggest the forests of their North Carolina base with the mostly instrumental, mostly guitar and keyboard music of Winter Tidings.

Lively jigs and reels, a Victorian Christmas card of a story set to music, a twelfth century Irish carol and a familiar American one, and a song about a cat: all those are on Matt and Shannon Heaton’s A Fine Winter’s Night. It’s an inviting and engaging collection from the Boston area couple, who mix Celtic and American influences with grace and care.

Christine Albert and Chris Gage have good fun with Mr. & Mrs. Santa Claus as well as the classic Baby It’s Cold Outside. River, Christmas Every Day, title track One More Christmas, and in a nod to Albert’s French Swiss background, the carol Un flambeau Jeannette, Isabella, are other fine songs on the disc. It’s really engaging to hear this pair work, together and separately.

Kelly Willis and Bruce Robisonoffer a friendly and inviting, and rather short, recording called Happy Holidays, which finds Willis in a torchy mood on Santa Baby and a thoughtful one on In the Bleak Midwinter, while Robison handles opposite ends of the Christmas music spectrum equally well on Please, Daddy, Don’t Get Drunk This Christmas, and Christmas in Newport City.

Canadian artists Eileen McGann, Cathy Smith, and David K put their popular holiday show on record a few years back. The three, who each have solo careers, call themselves Trilogy at Christmas time,. Their voices, harmonies, and senses of humor compliment each other well. The music they offer runs from O Magnum Mysterium to Mr. Grinch, from Christmas in the Trenches to The Huron Carol, to originals including the thoughtful look at another’s holiday. Turn it Around, and the funny turning a folk song to a new purpose song Snow Shanty.

Narada Best of Celtic Christmas is a double CD,. One disc, called The Night before, is all music form the Ireland based group Dordan, which does indeed suggest the anticipation, preparation, and mix of hushed reverence and excitement Christmas eve brings. The other disc is a range of music from a range of artists, which suggests how a Celtic Christmas really sounds. Among those offering their take on holiday gems are Bonnie Rideout, Altan, The Boys of the Lough, Cathie Ryan, Kathy Mattea, and Natalie MacMaster with Alison Krauss. Winter’s Eve is another collaboration of several artists which includes John R. Burr’s reflective piano on Snow at Waterloo, Pierce Pettis’ insightful look at Christ’s mother on Miriam, and Alison’s Brown’s refreshing take on the carol We Three Kings led by her banjo.

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