In my haste last year to get a Christmas EP out into the world before Thanksgiving, I realized today that I never actually posted anything about the release on my website. Today, I am remedying that and you can check out samples and learn where to hear last year’s release of O Holy Night plus get some insight on the release below.

Every one in a while, I do get into the holiday mood and dabble with some holiday music. My first was “What Child Is This?” also known as “Greensleeves.” I actually released this one as a single back in 2020, back when I knew far less than I do now about audio production, mixing and mastering, so I pulled the single, cleaned it up and put it in this release.

Later that holiday season, I recorded “3 Variations on ‘O Holy Night’.” Probably the most interesting variation of the 3, at least to me, is the 3rd, which is in 4/4, as opposed to the traditional 6/8 time signature of the piece. It gives it an interesting feel that is really punchy and upbeat. I invite you to check it out.

In 2021, I started working on something that was not holiday related at all, but I was really enjoying this pipe organ riff I was working on and as I gradually expanded it and added a choral section, the Christmas lyrics just came naturally:

Verse 1 – Dominus Sanctorum. Deus Nobiscum. Dominus Pastor
Verse 2 – Glory to God, in the highest. Born in Bethlehem; Our Lord Messiah.

In the end, I titled it “Cantat Pastoribus” which is Google Translate latin for “Shepherd Song.”

I didn’t get into the spirit again until 2024 when I started dabbling with an overlapping medley that I ended up calling “Celestial Christmas.” This piece has several melodies that overlap at given times:

“O Holy Night” with “Silent Night”
“Good King Wenceslas” with “It Came Upon a Midnight Clear”
“Angels We Have Heard on High” with “O Little Town of Bethlehem”

With these four recordings, I felt I had something worth releasing and since the majority of the content revolved around “O Holy Night,” I decide to name the EP as such.

Now for the art work. For the front and back cover, I chose Adoration of the Shepherds (1622) by Gerard Van Honthorst.

As I mentioned back on my Pause release, I am a big fan of Baroque art and this is a great example with Jesus being the source of illumination. With this piece, I juxtaposed template lettering, mainly because it was antithetical to the nature of the painting, but it worked so well together (in my opinion).

When you compare the painting in final front cover, you can see how I emphasized the illumination of the Christ child so that Jesus and Mary are the sole focus.

For the inside cover, I did little more than apply a severe gaussian blur to the source image to give me a nice background to work with:

And then for the tray card, I took my modified version of the painting used for the front cover (illuminated version), darkened the edges and then applied a blur to the edges to keep the focus on the subject matter. To be honest, the shepherd on the far left just had a face that was distracting and pulling attention away from the subject matter and I used subtle tricks to de-emphasize it.

In addition to this release, I took some time and put together a Christmas music playlist on Spotify with some of my favorites. I hope you will take some time to listen to O Holy Night and playlist, once the holiday mood strikes.