A Nancy Wilson Christmas

1	Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow! 3:56
2	Sweet Little Jesus Boy / New York Voices 4:10
3	White Christmas 3:47
4	Silver Bells 4:04
5	What Are You Doing New Year's Eve? 4:50
6	All Through the Night 3:57
7	O Christmas Tree 4:40
8	O Holy Night 5:03
9	Carol of the Bells / New York Voices 6:30
10	God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen 3:30
11	Christmas Time Is Here 3:30
12	Angels We Have Heard on High 3:51
13	The Christmas Song 5:31

Barnes & Noble

For the first Christmas album of a celebrated career that spans 49 years and more than 60 recordings, Nancy Wilson pulls out all the stops. The jazz diva surrounds herself with the Dizzy Gillespie Alumni All-Star Big Band, the New York Voices, her working trio (Llew Matthews, piano; John Williams, bass; Roy McCurdy, drums), and guest artists Herbie Mann, Claudio Roditi, and Monty Alexander. Several arrangers impart fresh, pungent settings for the 13 old chestnuts on which she works her magic. For all the recontextualizing (a Jobim-esque "White Christmas," "O Tannenbaum" in a Bahian carnival vein, a modernist woodwind-string arrangement by Jay Ashby framing "Holy Night," "Silver Bells" as a Gillespian blues), Wilson never loses sight of the spiritual content that bedrocks her material. In her familiar manner, with a resonant voice that bears in its inflection and phrasing the influence of her church origins and her youthful heroes Nat Cole, Dinah Washington, and Little Jimmy Scott (e.g., the album-concluding "Christmas Song"), she elicits every drop of emotion from the songs while never descending to bathos, and is fully at home in her spirituality. Proceeds go to Manchester Craftsmen's Guild, a Pittsburgh-based multidisciplinary, minority-directed arts and learning center. Ted Panken

All Music Guide

It seems a little bit strange that an artist of Nancy Wilson's popularity and experience -- she's recorded more than 60 albums in various genres over the course of a 40-year career -- would never have made a Christmas album. But this is indeed her first, and it's as sweet-spirited and gently eclectic as you'd expect. Joined on several tracks by the Dizzy Gillespie Alumni Allstar Big Band and on others by the vocal quartet New York Voices, flutist Herbie Mann, and various other guest artists, Wilson takes highly predictable elements and creates an original and multifaceted pastiche out of them. From the bossa nova rendition of "White Christmas" to the dense vocal arrangements on "Silver Bells," Wilson manages to keep things both interesting and fun. The fact that her voice remains as powerful and nuanced as ever doesn't hurt, either. Rick Anderson