Now that Christmas is past and I've had time to 'harvest' some of our recordings of performances, I was pleased with this quite difficult a cappella vocal ensemble piece. It's sort of a 'mash-up' of fragments of familiar Christmas songs (i.e. "Deck the Halls" and "Jingle-bells"), but not really using any complete melody.

I consider it to be more of an original composition than an arrangement, using Classical techniques of linear motivic patterns in a Jazz swing style. At times the clashing harmonies drove my vocalists crazy, when we were working the piece up. The group performed for memory and learned the piece as much from audio recordings as from the sheet-music score.

Hats off the the hard-working praise vocalists of Odessa Christian Faith Center, bringing it to life. As I was part of the team, my experience was one of exhilaration, knowing that if one section got off track just a little bit, the whole thing would have snow-balled...it was a little like riding a toboggan down a steep hill wondering if we were all going to fly off at some point!

Hope you enjoy!