Christmas choral music on Spotify

December 2, 2012 10:17 AM

Can you recommend some good Christmas choral music on Spotify? I've been listening a lot to The King's Singers and Tenebrae but I can see that there are lots of other choirs with Christmas albums on Spotify. Who is good? I love choral music and know the good choirs in my area, but don't know who is good elsewhere in the U.S. and around the world.
posted by Area Man to media & arts (10 answers total)

Chanticleer has a couple of excellent Christmas albums. Also the King's College Choir. Other good bets are the Cambridge Singers, the Bach Choir of Bethlehem, and the Robert Shaw Singers.
posted by altopower at 10:46 AM on December 2, 2012 [1 favorite]

A mixture of traditional and early music groups here:

Cambridge Singers
Clare College Singers
Boston Camerata
Baltimore Camerata
King's College Choir
Robert Shaw Choir
Musica Intima
Chanticleer
New York Pro Musica Antiqua
Polyphony
Roger Wagner Chorale
San Francisco Symphony Chorus
Los Angeles Master Chorale
Swingle Singers

That should get you going...
posted by DandyRandy at 10:47 AM on December 2, 2012 [1 favorite]

If you like King's College Choir, I think St John's College choir sing very similar music and are better (I prefer the sound).
posted by kadia_a at 10:57 AM on December 2, 2012

How can you skip the Dale Warland Singers? They're defunct now, but they made up a large chunk of the music from my childhood.

The Mormon Tabernacle Choir, that grinning army of sound, has all sorts of songs that have become our family's standards. We CAN'T get up on Christmas morning without the version of "Joy to the World" that is 2:14 long and starts with the trumpets going DAH DAH DA-DAHHHH! (There are, obviously, several.) Their version of "The First Noel" is wonderful; they've got some good arrangers.

The St. Olaf College Christmas Concert is legendary. I'm sure they have a bunch of albums out there.

Anonymous 4 isn't a choir, but you might like their Christmas albums.

The Sixteen, with Harry Christophers? (I always got confused by cd spines saying "The Sixteen Harry Christophers"...)

And if I may toot my own horn a bit, the fabulous Isthmus Vocal Ensemble's Isthmus Christmas is available at www.isthmusvocalensemble.org and possibly on spotify (which is good because I gave my copy to someone).
posted by Madamina at 11:47 AM on December 2, 2012

Oh, also: last year, when I was looking for a good recording of Britten's Ceremony of Carols, I found a wonderful version by the Etherea Vocal Ensemble (all-female, I believe). I'd never heard of them, but they were pretty great.
posted by Madamina at 11:50 AM on December 2, 2012

AND (God, I swear I'm leaving now) don't forget the Atlanta Symphony Chorus, which was led by Robert Shaw distinctly separate from the Robert Shaw Festival Singers.
posted by Madamina at 11:52 AM on December 2, 2012

Ex Cathedra: Christmas Music by Candlelight (Alleluya, a new work) and Joy in the Morning. Both are impeccable, warm, varied and exciting; I can't recommend them enough. Also Sanctus: Baroque music for the Nativity which I've just noticed is on Spotify but haven't yet listened to!
posted by lokta at 1:05 PM on December 2, 2012

Off the Pandora classic Christmas station (I cross-checked and all of these have at least some Christmas music on Spotify):

Taverner Choir
City of Prague Philharmonic Orchestra (look for Christmas Choral Classics)
San Francisco Girls Chorus (especially Christmas (2006))
Hungarian Radio Chorus

I'm not going to say that these are the best choirs (myself, I still love the Mormon Tabernacle Choir and I do like the Cambridge Singers quite a bit) but you can certainly add them to the list.
posted by librarylis at 7:52 PM on December 2, 2012

John Rutter's Carols from Clare, with the Clare College Singers and Orchestra, has been a staple of my family's Christmas celebrations for quite some time. It's not for everyone. Bombastic is probably a pretty safe adjective to use. But if you dig the style, you'll love it.
posted by SpiffyRob at 8:44 AM on December 3, 2012

Thanks everyone. I've started to slowly make my way through you recommendations.
posted by Area Man at 1:01 PM on December 3, 2012