DCD34331-CD

Gabriel Jackson: The Christmas Story

Limited Edition: 500 CDs available worldwide

Long associated with the music of Gabriel Jackson, in 2020 the Choir of Merton College, Oxford and their director Benjamin Nicholas won a BBC Music Magazine Award for their recording of The Passion of our Lord Jesus Christ, a work which grounded its narrative of Christ’s suffering and humanity’s redemption in texts associated with the history of the College.

The Christmas Story, again with a libretto assembled by the College’s chaplain the Revd Dr Simon Jones, takes the same approach to tell the story of Christ’s birth. Spanning the period from Advent to Candlemas, it mixes biblical narrative with liturgical texts and four specially commissioned poems by members of the College.

The new poems are given to the College’s girl choristers (an independent part of its choral foundation since 2016), while the main body of the work is carried by the full choir and by an ensemble of flute, percussion, strings, saxophone and three trombones – the latter recalling the hieratic sonorities of the seventeenth-century works by Schütz and others which Jackson had in mind while composing The Christmas Story.

"There’s often a strangeness to The Christmas Story – of instrumentation, style, text – that helps refocus the ear on a story blurred by over-familiarity. Jackson builds musical bridges out to his more radical gestures, though, helping the listener across to new territory, and strong advocacy from Nicholas and his musicians does the rest. It’s another appealing and viably enduring contribution to the repertoire from an institution putting its commissioning money where its mouth is when it comes to the choral tradition ..."

EDITOR'S CHOICE
read the full review here

"If you find the whole Christmas-carol- with-mince-pie-and glass-of-sherry thing just too smothered in brandy butter for your taste and are searching for a truly new, sincere musical interpretation of the season, then Gabriel Jackson: The Christmas Storyis for you ... The Choir and Girl Choristers of Merton College, Oxford, and Oxford Contemporary Sinfonia, directed by Benjamin Nicholas, bring this scholarly work to life. It's not singalong stuff, indeed it's quite chewy at times, but it is excitingly modern and deeply sincere. And it's rooted in the college. The new Dean of Lincoln, the Very Rev Dr Simon Jones, was chaplain at Merton and compiled the libretto, using the King James Version of the Bible, part of which was translated at Merton, and he includes specially commissioned poems by two contemporary Merton poets, Penny Boxall and Mary Anne Clark. Don't peel the sprouts to this one, but sit down and absorb its many moments of beauty"

The Christmas Story is a very individual and strikingly original work. Both the music and the expertly constructed libretto are compelling ... Benjamin Nicholas leads a recorded performance that is assured and completely incisive. The singing of both choirs is marvellous. The clarity of diction and the disciplined singing is exemplary. As for the instrumental playing, it’s expert and accomplished from start to finish; I marvel at the sonorities and illustrative colours that Jackson obtains through imaginative scoring from just eleven musicians, plus the organ ... Gabriel Jackson has composed a work which is an important, eloquent and compelling addition to the Christmas repertoire. This highly accomplished and committed first recording makes the best possible case for it"

John Quinn - MusicWeb International
RECCOMMENDED - read his full review here

 

Release Date: 8 November 2024
Catalogue No: DCD34311
Total playing time: [73:41]

Recorded on 11-12 December 2023 in the Chapel of Merton College, Oxford
Producer/Engineer: Paul Baxter
24-bit digital editing: Jack Davis
24-bit digital mixing & mastering: Paul Baxter

Session photography: Will Coates- Gibson / foxbrushfilms.com Design: John Christ
Booklet editor: John Fallas

Delphian Records Ltd – Edinburgh – UK www.delphianrecords.com


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PREVIEW

And they were in the same country

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Gramophone Magazine

Alexandra Coghlan's Gramophone Magazine, review, chosen as December Editor's Choice by Editor Martin Cullingford

Recording sessions in Merton College Chapelimage foxbrush.co.uk

A decade on, and Gabriel Jackson’s award-winning collaboration with Benjamin Nicholas and the Choir of Merton College, Oxford, The Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ (4/19), gets a major follow-up. Premiered last year and now recorded for the first time, The Christmas Story also reunites Jackson with Simon Jones, who once again collates the patchwork libretto for this large-scale choral project.

Christmas may be the headline here but it forms only one panel of four – each a meditative sequence of motets, antiphons, responsories and Gospel settings – that take us from Advent right through to Candlemas.

Jones shapes and paces his drama astutely, zooming in on the human – a lurching dance at the Cana wedding, the musings of the pregnant Mary, the ‘bit and plough’ hanging ready for the working day in the Bethlehem stable – while also panning out to the mystical, combining the narrative of the Gospels with contemplation, first-person episodes in contemporary verse with Latin liturgical texts.

 

Musically, there’s a strong relationship with Jackson’s Passion. The alto saxophone is back, an arresting solo voice, nodding as much to shofars as shawms and trumpets – a bit ancient and a lot modern, especially when framed by the other musicians of the 12-strong Oxford Contemporary Sinfonia. A busy percussionist moves between (among others) glockenspiel, vibraphone, tubular bells and tambourine in a score filled with light, whether that’s cool glints and shards of tuned percussion or glowing organ radiance.

"another appealing and viably enduring contribution to the repertoire "

Jackson clearly relishes the set pieces, their character deftly shaped by conductor Benjamin Nicholas: there’s a folksy drone and stamping drum-and-lower-voices music for the shepherds, that bibulous wedding dance for nimble flute and violin and a swaggering tambourine, and a hazy-radiant ‘O magnum mysterium’ ripe for excerpting – voices blurred in echoing, asymmetric movement, haloed by the gentle resonance of a vibraphone ...

Alexandra Coghlan

This article originally appeared in the December 2024 issue of Gramophone.

Watch


The thrilling final moments of Jackson's The Christmas Story, filmed during recording sessions in Merton College Chapel ...

Album Booklet

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