The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #117083   Message #2518906
Posted By: Desert Dancer
18-Dec-08 - 10:50 AM
Thread Name: NPR: interesting Christmas music stuff
Subject: NPR: interesting Christmas music stuff
On today's "Morning Edition", Trio Mediaeval's Norwegian Christmas.

There's also a whole 52+ minute program, "Choirs And Carols: An NPR Christmas", made up of music from various groups who have visited NPR studios. It features music from Anonymous 4, Baltimore Consort, Kitka (a group of women from Oakland, CA, who sing an Eastern European repertoire), YL Men's Choir (from Finland), The Pittsburgh Symphony Brass, Trio Mediaeval (a trio of women from Norway), American Boy Choir (Princeton, NJ), Riga Dom Cathedral Boys Choir (from Latvia). This all looks like a real treat. This was not a broadcast program, but assembled for online listening from full pieces recorded in the making of broadcasts.

"A Holiday Mix from All Songs Considered" has a varied assortment, also online only.

Another varied assortment: "Jingle Jams: A Holiday Mix From NPR Music" -- they say "We asked 10 stations to send us 10 of their favorite holiday songs, mixed them up and this is what we got – a festive stream of songs by everyone from Bach to the Ramones to Louis Armstrong." It runs as a continuous loop of music.

Here's a participatory item: "Homework: Join Our National Caroling Party" -- record your own rendition of "Santa Claus is Coming to Town" (no, this is not the Sheffield carols...) in the designated key and tempo, e-mail it in, and on Sunday, Dec. 21, they'll play as many versions as they can on All Things Considered.

In fact, here's an index page for all their holiday music!

NPR on the web is pretty cool, I've only started digging into it recently.

~ Becky in Tucson