ChristmasMusicFilter: More music like George Winston's "December" or Al Di Meola's "Winter Nights"?

November 18, 2008 5:27 PM

ChristmasMusicFilter: More music like George Winston's "December" or Al Di Meola's "Winter Nights"?

I love George Winston's "December" Album. I would love to have a few more albums to go in rotation with it. Currently the only other thing I have that really fits is Al Di Meola's "Winter Nights", and its way more guitar than piano (since di meola is a guitarist)

I love all christmas music and support both secular and christian pieces with no problem. I'm particularly looking for more piano stuff like Winston's December album, but I would also love anything like the Winter Nights album. Instrumental stuff that can fade into the background but is still wonderful to listen to directly.

Thanks!

posted by jeffderek to media & arts (8 comments total)

I'm not really a christmas music fan but I absolutely love David Grisman's Acoustic Christmas.
posted by Sailormom at 6:57 PM on November 18, 2008

A Soulful Christmas by Brian Culbertson, smooth jazz pianist
Peter White Christmas with Mindi Abair and Rick Braun
posted by netbros at 8:53 PM on November 18, 2008

Windham Hill Holiday Guitar Collection
A Windham Hill Christmas

And there are a dozen more Windham Hill Christmas albums; they've been releasing them for decades. All instrumental, all mostly piano or guitar. There's a string of releases called "A Winter's Solstice (Volumes 1 - ?) that are also Christmas or Winter music.

The Best of Narada Christmas

There's even an entire category at Amazon you could dig through.

Other instrumentals I tend to listen to in the Fall or Xmas time: Michael Jones After the Rain and Air Born; David Huntsinger's Autumn in New England.

And while it's not Xmas music, it's in constant rotation on my iPod: Michael Nyman's film scores: The Piano, Wonderland, Gattaca. Especially Wonderland, perhaps my favorite film score of all time; a true work of genius.
posted by mrbarrett.com at 5:05 AM on November 19, 2008

I really like Ed Gerhard's two acoustic guitar CDs Christmas and On A Cold Winter's Night. Both are simple, and great for having on in the background during a party or dinner.
posted by genefinder at 7:00 AM on November 19, 2008

Robin Spielberg's In the Heart of Winter is cut from the same cloth. A very nice album of mostly solo piano.

And it's kinda rare, but Herb Avery's New Age Noel is my absolute favorite.
posted by eafarris at 7:27 AM on November 19, 2008

Mrbarrett.com already mentioned the Windham Hill "Winter's Solstice" series. Personally I only really like the first two - those are from Windham Hill's early years when I felt they were more about good quality artistic music. From there I feel like they slipped downhill into soulless, ultra-bland "smooth jazz" crap. (Just my opinion.) Anyway, you can try looking for more by the various artists on them. The names William Ackerman, Phillip Aaberg, and Nightnoise come to mind though I don't know if any has a dedicated Christmas/holiday album of their own.

How do you feel about choral music? I know it's not instrumental nor piano, but there's an Irish choral group called Anuna that has a really lovely Christmas album. It's very serene and quiet, would actually blend well with George Winston.
posted by dnash at 8:21 AM on November 19, 2008

Cyrus Chestnut - Blessed Quietness. Much more jazz/gospel content than George Winston, but I prefer this album to December. It's a mix of traditional Christmas carols and gospel songs, but there are no other instruments on the album other than Chestnut and his piano.
posted by emelenjr at 10:05 AM on November 19, 2008

Windham Hill also released two 'Carols of Christmas' CD collections about a million years ago - you might have some luck finding used copies. These are all instrumental in that good ole Windham Hill style by their galaxy of recording artists, and I'm always happy when I break them out this time of year.

I can also recommend WH's 'A Winter Solstice' series, the focus of which is more seasonal than specifically holiday-oriented. I think they're up to vol. 5 now.
posted by DandyRandy at 12:35 PM on November 19, 2008