Album Notes

"Mr. Jeffrey Reid Baker has created here is a CD of over 72 minutes of sometimes hilarious, sometimes deeply affecting, parodies of favorite Christmas carols in the styles of 17 great classical composers (plus one from the Middle Ages whom we must call "Anonymous"). Mixing the resources of a grand piano and electronic keyboards, Mr. Baker has given us another amazing experience from what the New York Times called his "intergalactic music box." He is a sort of impish musical chameleon, seemingly able to create just about any illusion electronically; the wonderful thing is, these are more than tricks: they are fascinating statements of "what might have been" had Richard Wagner, for example, written "O Holy Night" instead of the "Pilgrims' Chorus" in Tannhäuser.
What really takes one's breath away in almost all the fantasies on this album is how apt each carol seems in its new setting. One might almost think that "O Come, O Come Emmanuel" would have been a better fit than the melody Rachmaninov actually used in his Piano Concerto No. 2! "Revelations" such as this are what bring smiles to listeners' faces, and we hope you will be among those grinning this week when you hear "Oh Come All Ye Faithful" magically metamorphosed into "The Great Gate of Kiev" from Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition, or Saint-Saëns returning to earth to wink at us with "The Swan upon a Midnight Clear" from Carnival of the Animals. "

From the review by Bill Parker (Author of Building A Classical Collection)