Music by Margaret Bonds, Ken Burton, Rosephanye Powell, Florence Price, Errollyn Wallen, and Roderick Williams.

Skylark Vocal Ensemble’s A Christmas Carol represents the culmination of nearly a decade of innovative storytelling concerts that began in 2016. The original concept for this musical interpretation of A Christmas Carol was developed during the COVID-19 pandemic and first recorded in 2021. Working from Dickens’s original 30,000-word manuscript, Artistic Director Matthew Guard carefully abridged the text to preserve its …

The Miró Quartet’s first holiday album is an assemblage of classical music’s top living composers, each of them contributing an original arrangement of a beloved holiday song. Drawing from diverse traditions and memories of holidays past, the recording also brings together new arrangements of “In Dulci Jubilo” by Clarice Assad; “The First Noël” by Kevin Puts, “Jingle Bells” by Michi …

One of the UK’s foremost recording choirs, The London Choral Sinfonia marks its tenth anniversary with On Christmas Night, a festive collection of classic carols in vivid new orchestrations. Led by conductor Michael Waldron, highlights include star treble Malakai Bayoh as soloist in Howard Blake’s “Walking in the Air,” and British soprano Emma Bell singing a new arrangement of “O …

Composers Jocelyn Hagen and Timothy C. Takach partnered with the VOCES8 Foundation Choir and Orchestra and violinist Jack Liebeck to create and record Rose Ever Blooming, a new 55-minute Christmas oratorio featuring SATB choir, violin solo, and orchestra. The libretto is inspired by Patricia Monaghan’s poetry, featuring twelve poems woven together with traditional Christmas carols as musical touchstones. Rose Ever …

The Choir of King’s College, Cambridge presents a new Christmas album with the Britten Sinfonia under the direction of Daniel Hyde recorded in the beloved Chapel of King’s College. The program features beautiful orchestral arrangements of carols by John Rutter alongside a selection of both well-loved and lesser-known carols by the great choral composers who have influenced him, including Philip …

Crossover classical pianist, arranger, and composer Chloe Flowers presents her first Christmas album. While planning this release, Flowers discovered that works by women composers represented less than 1% of the music performed during the holiday season. “There are just so many Christmas pieces that are known, which are stunning, but there’s actually so many women-composed holiday music out there that …

The St John’s College Choir Cambridge presents their second album led by their new music director Christopher Gray. At the center of the program are the atmospheric Quatre Motets pour le temps de Noël by Francis Poulenc, and the heartfelt Three Carol-Anthems by Herbert Howells who directed the St John’s Choir during the Second World War. Other selections include the …

Under the direction of Christopher Bell, the Grant Park Chorus presents a heartfelt collection of carols and contemporary choral favorites for the holiday season. From the quiet reflection of “Silent Night” and “In The Bleak Midwinter” to the shimmering mystery of “O Magnum Mysterium” in two settings (Tomás Luis de Victoria and Morten Lauridsen), the album offers movements of both …

Rising star Armenian-British composer and pianist Kristina Arekelyan is the winner of the 2010 BBC Proms Young Composers Competition. She completed her PhD in Composition at King’s College London where she was a student of Joseph Fort. Her compositions have already been featured on the BBC Proms and she has collaborated with the BBC Singers, BBC Concert Orchestra, the Choir …

In the heart of Baroque Rome, the basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore is the principal Marian sanctuary of the Eternal City. For centuries it has guarded not only the relics of Jesus’s cradle and swaddling-clothes, but also the celebrated marble Nativity Scene by Arnolfo di Cambio (1291), the first of its kind in the history of art, thus earning it …

Ensemble Altera led by Christopher Lowrey presents their third release on Alpha, an album celebrating the female voice and the Christmas season. The program is a kaleidoscopic selection made up of sacred music (settings of the Magnificat and Ave Maria) and carols composed by women with works by Hildegard von Bingen, Imogen Holst, Germaine Tailleferre, Cecilia McDowall, Joanna Marsh, Barbara …

Following the success of the popular Mozart y Mambo project, Sarah Willis, horn-player of the Berliner Philharmonic, and The Sarahbanda release their first album on Deutsche Grammophon. Together they inject the colourful, contagious energy of Cuban music into a selection of timeless holiday classics. With their trademark genre-defying approach, the album includes works by Bach and Tchaikovsky – also re-imagined …

The Grammy Award-winning vocal ensemble Chanticleer presents their new Christmas collection. The repertoire blends tradition with innovation, combining Renaissance motets and fresh arrangements of classic carols with contemporary compositions, including works by Lowell Mason, Sarah Quartel, Michael Praetorius, Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, Cristóbal de Morales, Henry Gauntlett, John Jacob Niles, Steven Sametz, John Francis Wade, Franz Xaver Gruber, Richard Rodgers, …

This new album that showcases the singers of Trinity Church Boston, the historic 1,500-seat Episcopal Church in Boston’s Back Bay. The title comes from “O Little Town of Bethlehem”, the famous text penned by Phillips Brooks, the storied nineteenth century rector of Trinity Church –  yet the release has a contemporary feel that showcases the choir’s commitment to inclusivity, community, …

In early December 2024, five-and-a-half years after the devastating fire of 2019, the great Cathedral of Notre-Dame de Paris reopened to the public. This recording of a new choral setting of the Magnificat by the organist-composer Yves Castagnet celebrates the cathedral’s “rebirth.” Since 1988, Castagnet has held the post of choir organist at Notre-Dame. His role also encompasses interpretative coaching …

Led by bass and recorder player Lionel Meunier, Vox Luminis is an early music ensemble based in Belgium which specializes in English, Italian, and especially German 17th- and 18th- century repertoire. The ensemble is comprised of some of the most sought-after European vocal soloists, and is supplemented, depending on the repertoire, with an extensive continuo, solo instruments, or a complete …

The Windsbacher Boys’ Choir is considered one of the best ensembles of its kind. Since its founding in 1946, it has stood for the synthesis of musicality, versatility, precision and purity of sound. Ludwig Böhme has been the new artistic director of the Windsbacher since 2022. The new Christmas album, for which they joined forces with the Berlin-based period instrument …

Lieder specialist Benjamin Appl celebrates Christmas with sacred arias by Bach and Mendelssohn, carols from Germany, Austria, America, Britain, Sweden and France. Appl is accompanied by instrumentalists (including his own mother on guitar), the Munich Radio Orchestra, and Germany’s most famous children’s choir, Regensburger Domspatzen, of which he was a member in his youth. “I returned to my hometown to …

Comprised of a treble line of boy choristers and an ATB line of men and women, the Choir of Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford holds a distinctive place within the great English choral tradition. Unlike all other collegiate and cathedral choirs, it serves both an Oxford college and a diocese. The choir is revered for the vibrancy of its sound and …

Carlos Simon — Composer-in-Residence for the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, the inaugural Boston Symphony Orchestra Composer Chair, and a member of The Blacknificent 7 — has already had his music performed by the world’s leading ensembles including the National Symphony Orchestra, Boston Symphony Orchestra, BBC Symphony Orchestra for the Last Night of the Proms, the Cincinnati …

The latest album from the prolific 25-year-old trumpeter Lucienne Renaudin Vary features a collection of winter-themed popular songs by Richard Rodgers, Charlie Chaplin, and Hugh Martin alongside short movements from the classical repertoire by Dvořák, Rossini, Falla, Kreisler, Bach, and Vivaldi. Winter Gardens, which features the Paris Chamber Orchestra conducted by Sascha Goetzel, also features a work new to the …

A selection of John Rutter’s most famous Christmas carols in beautiful new arrangements for brass, performed by the Black Dyke Band. Rutter’s sense of melody combined with a rich harmonic palette makes his music instantly accessible to performers and audiences alike, making him one of the most acclaimed and successful composers of carols alive today. The Sheffield Philharmonic Chorus, led …

The Ukrainian violin virtuoso Solomiya Ivakhiv presents a selection of Ukrainian Christmas carols arranged for violin and orchestra. Accompanying Ivakhiv in these world premiere recordings is the Lviv National Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Serhii Khorovets. The soulful playing of Solomiya Ivakhiv, who grew up in Western Ukraine singing these songs, and the fanciful arrangements of Bohdan Kryvopust, born in …