Holiday gift ideas: 3 Albums for the Winter Season

Winter: it is a season of celebration and quiet, of gathering and solitude.

Music goes along with all of those things. One of the great things about music is that it may be enjoyed alone and in company.

With those thoughts in mind, here are further ideas of music for your holiday gft list, for yourself or others.

For the album A Fiddler’s Holiday, Jay Ungar, Molly Mason, Ruth Ungar, and Michael Merenda join up with the Orchestra of the University of Mary Washington in Virginia for a seasonal and holiday themed excursion.

There are songs quiet and fast paced, about a snowstorm, the harvest, a silent night in a famialr way snd as a two step, a Quebecois medley about children’s toys, Jay’s classic tune Ashokan Farewell, and more. If you or or someone you know is celebrating Chanukah, the song in this could be a great song for to share. If that holiday is not in your tradition or if the days of celebrating it are past when you read this, I think you will still enjoy this lively song.

The recording on which you will find it is called A Fiddler’s Holiday. There is a dvd available of the live concert, too.

Hanneke Cassel offers a reflective look at Advent and the winter season as she pairs O Come O Come Emmanuel with her original tune Star of Wonder.This is the title track from her new Christmas album O Come Emmanuel.

The music is a selection of original, traditional, and contemporary tunes and songs of faith and of the winter season, led by Hanneke’s fiddle, with contributions from musical friends including Christopher Lewis, Keith Murphy, Yann Falquet, Mike Block, Jeremy Kittel, Jenna Moynihan, Casey Driessen, and Tim Downing and selection of guest singers including Helene Blum, Luke Bulla, Jennifer KImball, and Aoife O’Donovan.

It is Cassel’s fiddle which illuminates each track, however whether leading tunes such as The Snow March or surrounding and supporting singers such as on a thoughtful and creative arrangement of Silent Night, with words sung in several languages.

Cassel is an award winning player, composer, and educator, a past US Scottish National Fiddle Champion who has taken her Celtic rooted music across the world. She is also a woman of strong faith. It’s been a longtime dream of hers to create a Christmas album. She felt this year was the right moment. Take a listen, takee several, in fact, to each of the ten tracks on O Come Emmanuel, to hear why she is right about that. Uplifting, reflective, creative, hopeful, O Come Emmanuel is a Christmas classic, and a fiddle classic, in the making.

April Verch and Joe Newberry decided this was the right year for a holiday album too, and they were alos right about that. Verch, who comes from the Ottawa Valley in the Canadian province of Ontario, and Newberry, who draws on Ozark and Appalachian roots, intertwine those musical sources to great effect on their album On This Christmas Day. Joe Newberry plays banjo, guitar, and fiddle; April Verch plays fiddle and stepdances. They both sing, and they both write songs. Most of the songs on this album are originals, in fact, joined by a few well chosen covers.

It might be a bit of a challenge to write a Christmas song, given all the seasonal music already in existence. It’s a challenge each artist meets well though, creating music that explores by turns the joy and mystery of the holiday season. Though they come from different geographic areas, both Joe and April grew up with Christmas traditions celebrating home and hearth, traditions they continue to celebrate and enjoy. For several years they’ve been doing holiday season tours together. On This Christmas Day is the first time they have put the seasonal music on record, though.

Warm and welcoming, with top class musicianship and songwriting, the album will make a great choice for your own music library and as a lasting gift for friends who enjoy bluegrass and old time music along with excellent singing and playing.

Here is the title track from On This Christmas Day. Joe wrote it after soundcheck in a restored church in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

There’s more to come here along the music road, both gift ideas and seasonal favorites old and new to enjoy. Stay with us as the season unfolds.

You may also enjoy
On this Christmas Day at April Verch’s web shop
First story of this season’s holiday gift ideas: Albums from Sarah McQuaid, the Spell Songs Singers, and the band Staran
Hanneke Cassel’s website
Music for Autumn’s Landscapes at Wandering Educators
Second in this season’s holiday gift ideas: music from Graham Rorie, David Milligan, Karine Polwart
Jay Ungar and Molly Mason’s website

Photograph by Jill Wellington

In times when you are able to listen to much music at no cost, take this as a gentle reminder that if you enjoy this music, help support the work of these artists and the cause of good, thoughtful music everywhere by purchasing their music. Direct purchase from an artist’s site is one way. Bandcamp is also a platform which supports artists’ work.

Speaking of support, if you’re in a position to do so this holiday season, your support for Music Road is most welcome. Here’s one way:

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music and love

Love songs without words -- that’s what Jay Ungar and Molly Mason offer from most of the tracks on their recording Lovers' Waltz. Ungar plays fiddle, Mason guitar, bass and keyboards. The tile track, an original tune, is a a graceful evocation of the dance of love in in turns and travels. That was the centerpiece when the couple began to gather music for the album.

They have joined it with music from the Klezmer tradition, a Fats Waller song, A waltz from Finland, a Cajun two step, an Irish air, a bit of swing, and a tune that was played at their own wedding. The music comprises a narrative of sorts of the course of a romance. Whatever circumstance you might have in your own life, Mason and Ungar’s work here will offer you reflection both quiet and lively to go along.

You might also like to give a listen to Cathie Ryan’s take on Kate Rusby’s song Walk the Road, a story of friendship, love and encouragement.

You may also wish to check out
Lovers' Well: Matt and Shannon Heaton
a bouquet of Celtic love songs and tunes
Favorite Love Songs

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Music for Thanksgiving

Harvest. Gathering in. Gathering together. Preparing for winter’s colder days and nights. Watching the change of light, the changing color of leaves. Singing hymns of Thanksgiving, songs of harvest, giving thanks for grace. Songs of hope for a cold winter’s night, and a family gathered around. Whethter you live close to the land or you do not, close to songs of faith or not, with family or not, these things still form part of this time of year. A time, indeed, for thanksgiving.

James Galway, Jay Ungar, and Molly Mason have an album that is well suited to this time. It is called Song of Home. On it, with fiddle and bow, flute and guitar (Peter Ostroushko adds mandolin too), they travel from Cape Breton to the west and back again, finding common threads and contrasting colors in the celebration of what it means to come home.

The album is a meditative door opening to this season of sharing and connecting, and a fine companion through it. Music includes My Cape Breton Home, West Texas Waltz, Bound for California, and Oh Shenandoah/Shenandoah Falls. There are also selections from the Harvest Home suite, music which Ungar and Mason wrote following the urn of seasons across the land and the landscapes of life.

Ungar and Mason have another album well suited to this season of thanksgiving .It is called Harvest Home and includes music from the Harvest Home suite as well as original and traditional music. They have anew album out, too which focuses on the winter holiday season and is called A Fiddler's Holiday With The Jay Ungar & Molly Mason Family Band.

You may also wish to see

harvest time

Autumn music: preparation and presence

photograph of pumpkins is by Kerry Dexter. Thank you for respecting copyright

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Autumn & Thanksgiving listening, continued

In the second half of autumn. there’s gathering in of harvest and looking back toward summer, while heading into the work of winter.

Autumn is a very fine season all on its own, though, with work of transition, and work of connection, work of creation and work of preparation.


As you walk through the season, good musical companions are Hanneke Cassel’s For Reasons Unseen and Jay Ungar and Molly Mason’s Harvest Home.

Harvest Home comprises an orchestral piece of that same name, done in collaboration with the Nashville Chamber Orchestra (now known as Orchestra Nashville), and a selection of tunes crossing landscapes of place and musical geography of the United States. . Ungar plays the fiddle, Mason is a guitarist, and other musicians you’ve met here along the music road sit in, among them Christine Balfa, John Kirk, Keith Murphy, and Paul Gambill, who conducts the Nashville Chamber orchestra for this outing. It’s a fine collection all around. Haymaker’s Hoedown, Prairie Spring, and Bound for Another Harvest Home are good ways to get an idea of the spirit of things, and you may very likely recognize another original tune, Ashokan Farewell.

Cassel’s album wasn’t designed especially for the harvest time of year, but the music she chooses for it holds a reflective idea, even in the fast paced pieces, that works well with the season. Cassel is a fiddle player, pianist, and composer whose work is grounded in Scottish tradition with dashes of Americana and Irish flavor , and in this case, music she learned while traveling in China, as well. Musicians you’ve crossed paths with along the music road sit in with Cassel too, among them Natalie Haas, Alasdair Fraser, and Lissa Schneckenburger. As is Harvest Home, For Reasons Unseen is an album to listen to all the way through, and with especial note of the Blackberry Meadow Footrace set, The Goat Whisperer, and the Dusky Meadow set.

you may also wish to see

Music Road: harvest time
Music Road: autumn skies

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Harvest Time

Part of the work of autumn is gathering and sorting. Part of that is reflection, as well. These photographs, which were taken in Tallahassee, Florida, and Austin, Texas, remind me of these ideas and this work.




Music to go along includes Hanneke Cassel’s album Some Melodious Sonnet, and Jay Ungar and Molly Mason’s The Lovers' Waltz.


Neither of them is meant to be descriptive of autumn, but each holds within ideas which go well with this turn in the year's time. Ungar, who plays fiddle, and Mason, who is a guitarist, draw on landscapes and reflections and history to create a tapestry interwoven with searching, consideration, discovery, and continuation. Especially take a listen to Mountain House and The Contradance.

Hanneke Cassel’s music is grounded in Scottish style fiddle with flavors of American folk tradition and Irish music added to the mix. That is all well apparent on Some Melodious Sonnet from the lifting pace of the set that opens with Pauline Connelly's and continues through Dog Bites Chapman, and the set that links the Scottish trad of Pigeons on the Gate to Cassel’s original Mrs. Joyscream. There are quieter pieces as well leading to the closing hymn from which the title phrase arises, Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing. You need not know tune names or style, though, to find this recording, and Lovers’ Waltz as well, good companions for autumn’s work.

It is the turn of the year in Celtic legend, too. If you would care for some Irish music to go along, here are ideas for that.

you may also wish to see
Music Road: Hanneke Cassel: For Reasons Unseen
Music Road: reflections with Adrienne Young
Music Road: season of change: music for autumn


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

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Music for Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving time in the United States. Musical ideas to explore for the holiday

Hanneke Cassel and Christopher Lewis: Calm the Raging Sea Top Scottish style fiddler and guitarist turn their attention to a set of hymns

Jay Ungar and Molly Mason Harvest Home
fiddle and guitar on lively and reflective music of the American landscape


Mark O'Connor: Americana Symphony
classical and Americana meet in the hands of a composer who is master of both


Donal Clancy Close to Home Irish music, on guitar, close to home


bluegrass, jazz, Celtic, and folk keep good company on this recording from Alison Brown
The Company You Keep


you may also wish to see

Music Road: Daisycutter: Sara Milonovich

Music Road: holiday gift list: American harvest

Music Road: harvest time: Native American music

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Autumn music

North of the equator, at this time of year the quality of light, the sound of the breeze, the face of the clouds and the colors of the forest begin to call attention to the idea of change, to the memories of summer, and the gathering in of families, and of harvest. Of course, there’s music for all that, some straightforward, some perhaps more distantly connected.

One of the straightforward ones is Jay Ungar and Molly Mason’s Harvest Home. Titles including The Farmer's Set, Haymaker's Hoedown, and Bound For Another Harvest Home give the clue about this music which it at once both reflective and joyous. Ungar is a fiddler, mason is a guitarist, and they’ve a lovely dialog going here of music which reaches beyond the fall season but is very fitting for it.




The Celtic Colours Festival begins tomorrow on Cape Breton. Though she’s not playing there this year, Hanneke Cassel, pictured at right, often uses elements of Cape Breton style in her original compositions. Her latest release, Silver , is a really fine piece of listening for autumn, or any other season.


Keeping with the idea of instrumental music for the moment, Mark O’Connor, Natalie Haas, and Carol Cook collaborated on the interesting set Crossing Bridges, an upwelling of classical technique and American folk theme. Opening horizons all around.

That's what this turn of season is about, in a way, too. turning landscapes, new views, changing times, harvest home, new directions and familiar ones. And always, a time for great music.

-->Your support for Music Road is welcome and needed. If you are able to chip in, here is a way to do that, through PayPal. Note that you do not have to have a PayPal account to do this. Thank you.