O Come, O Come, Emmanuel

Christmas music consistently sells concert tickets and recordings more than any other repertoire category. British phenom ensemble Voces8 used their pandemic-era digital offerings as a springboard to launch a collaboration with American composer Taylor Scott Davis, resulting in the blockbuster recording release A Choral Christmas and its accompanying concert performances. Davis contributed an original multi-movement setting of the Magnificat and five carol arrangements for full orchestra and choir. For this project, the Voces8 ensemble is augmented by their Voces8 Foundation and accompanied by full orchestra conducted by founder and Artistic Director, Barnaby Smith. The arrangements are imaginative and skillful, in the vein of scores by John Williams and Robert Russell Bennett's The Many Moods of Christmas. With such indulgent musical language, the Voces8 project met mixed reviews from critics, yet it remains immensely popular with listeners. Performance with piano reductions loses much of the charm and sparkle of the full orchestral versions, particularly the coloristic accompaniment of Joy to the World and O Come, All Ye Faithful. The wordless Away in a Manger, using the Cradle Song tune, and Silent Night would both work reasonably well with piano and would find great enhancement with the violin solo from the full orchestra version. Whether grouped as a suite of carols or used individually, these popular arrangements make relatively light technical demands on singers while producing a strong effect in performance. —Jason Overall, The Journal of the Association of Anglican Musicians, November 2024