Favorite Holiday Music?

[Jen]

--- In HPFGU-OTChatter at y..., "Ebony" <ebonyink at h...> wrote:> 
> What are your favorites?

If I were to list all of the Christmas / holiday music I've either 
heard, sung, or played over the years and loved, we'd be all 
afternoon (and I must go to class in ten minutes *g*).  

I must admit to being crazy about the Beach Boys' Christmas album, 
which my dad would play every year.  (I finally broke down and bought 
it on cd last year, because I missed hearing it at Christmastime.)

I love "Christmas Eve on Sesame Street," particularly "True Blue 
Miracle" and "Keep Christmas With You."  I adore all the Sesame 
Street music. :)

And this will undoubtedly make John cringe, but I adore John Rutter 
and the Cambridge Singers' various Christmas albums.  (Yes, John, I 
am an unrepentant John Rutter fan.  He's far and away the best 
popular church composer working today.  It shouldn't be mistaken 
for 'classical' music, but as far as actual church music goes, it's 
much more interesting than most of what is being written now, and it 
isn't terribly 'global', and he gives sopranos things besides the 
melody. *g*)  The Oxford Carols for Choirs series (ed./arr. by Rutter 
and Willcocks) are simply the best choral arrangements of Christmas 
carols.  

Individual carols, well, I'm very fond of "Tomorrow Shall Be My 
Dancing Day," the "Sussex Carol," "The Boar's Head Carol," "Silent 
Night," the non-American version of "Away in a Manger," "Once in 
Royal David's City" (I've always wanted to be a boy soprano, an 
unfulfilled/able ambition indeed), "Lo How a Rose," but my all-time 
favorite has to be "Torches."  

--jen, off to class humming carols to herself. :)