A New Mexico Christmas, the Chorale’s first CD recording, was intended to recreate the Christmas dinner concerts that became a tradition for the Chorale and its audiences in the 1980s and 1990s. Held in early December, these concerts combined a festive holiday meal with a wide range of sacred and popular choral music of the holiday season. The repertoire for this recording, performed in concert in December 1996, included sacred works by T. L. de Victoria, Healey Willan, and Franz Biebl, arrangements of carols and other popular Christmas works by Irving Berlin, Nornan Luboff, and John Rutter, and traditional Christmas folk hymns from Northern New Mexico and Colorado, arranged, respectively, by New Mexicans Alex Chavez and Bradley Ellingboe.

Recorded October 25-26, 1996, at St. John’s United Methodist Church, Santa Fe, New Mexico

Recorded, edited, and mastered by Paul Blakemore Audio