Hear sounds of the season, and beyond, on new CDs with local ties

Let there be music for the holiday season. Amidst a sea of new CDs, you’ll find a number with local ties. Several feature Christmas music:

“Holiday Celebration, a Jazzy Collection of Seasonal Favorites,” allows you to hear in repeat last Tuesday’s program in the Musical Arts Center or, if you missed that, to catch up. Samplings from a satisfying menu of 15 items: the Jacobs School Brass Nonet favoring us with “Carol of the Bells,” the school’s Big Band in a catchy Mercer Ellington arrangement of “Jingle Bells,” soprano Sylvia McNair and tenor Brian Horne sounding naughty and nice in Frank Loesser’s “Baby It’s Cold Outside,” a delightful “Havana Holly Jolly” done by the Latin Jazz Ensemble, and guitarist Tyron Cooper accompanying mezzo Marietta Simpson in “Silent Night.” Steve Houghton put the show and CD together. Hurray for him. (IU Music)

“Peace” features two-time Grammy winner and Jacobs School faculty member Sylvia McNair, with a strings/guitar/flugelhorn ensemble, in 13 songs and carols, including a jaunty “Sleighride,” a beautifully reflective “My Favorite Things,” a poignant “Mary Did You Know” recounting a mother’s tie to son Jesus, the traditional “Greensleeves,” and a stirring “Let There Be Peace on Earth.” (www.SylviaMcNair.com)

“Kid Kazooey’s Lullaby Christmas Carols” brings us local favorite Kid Kazooey (aka Kevin MacDowell) and ukulele in lulling arrangements indeed of Christmas favorites, from “Joy to the World” and “Angels We Have Heard on High” to “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen” and “O Holy Night.” A welcome unknown item is a lovely “In the Sky the Stars Are Shining,” taught to MacDowell by his grandfather. All of the music, so gently performed, will calm your nerves, too. (www.kidkazooey.com)

“Repeat the Sounding Joy” is the Good Shepherd Band’s contribution to the season. The eight members of this band, who make music at Clear Note Church and, annually, offer a Christmas Sing-A-Long, have recorded 11 pieces, some standards (“Hark! The Herald Angels Sing,” “Lo, How a Rose E’er Blooming,” “Joy to the World”), some unusual (“Come, Thou Long Expected Jesus,” “Gabriel’s Message,” “Who Is This So Weak and Helpless”). Arrangements and performances fall sweetly on the ears. (ClearNote Records)

Consider also CDs without seasonal themes:

“Chez Chopin, 24 Etudes, 24 Recipes,” features the keyboard and culinary work of pianist Evelyne Brancart. The Etudes, as those who know what Brancart can do with such music, flow brilliantly. A companion Data Disc allows you to print her chosen recipes, including photos of the finished products. I’ve tested the music (which is terrific), not the food (I’ll leave that to you). (Delos)

“The Art of Beaux Arts Trio” is an 11-CD bonanza of recordings this legendary ensemble — artistically centered at the piano by Bloomington’s and IU’s Menahem Pressler — made from the 1960s to the mid-1990s. You get performances of Haydn, Beethoven, Schubert, Mendelssohn, Brahms, Dvorak, Chopin, Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninoff, Smetana, Ives, Shostakovich, Ravel, Chausson, Rorem, IU’s David Baker and Rochberg. Try to beat that collection. (Decca)

The Kalichstein-Laredo-Robinson Trio performs all three of Schubert’s piano trios, along with the Notturno for Piano and Strings and the Sonata for Arpeggione, as one expects this long-standing ensemble to: with urgency and unified vision. Wonderful music receives warmth of treatment. Violinist Jaime Laredo and cellist Sharon Robinson are Jacobs School fixtures. (Bridge)

The Weiss-Kaplan-Newman Trio (with pianist Yael Weiss and violinist Mark Kaplan the local ties) has issued a most worthy CD holding the B Major Piano Trio of Brahms and the G Minor of Smetana. Weiss’ forceful piano, Kaplan’s taut violin, and Clancy Newman’s lyrical cello give emotional weight to these passion-laden masterpieces. (Bridge)

“The Vanishing Nordic Chorale,” nominated for a Classical Grammy, features a contingent of IU Early Music Institute folks (current and former) playing as the Indianapolis-based, Philip Spray-directed ensemble Musik Ekklesia. Violinist Stanley Ritchie serves as leader. Their fare: a Bach cantata sung in Norwegian; Mendelssohn’s setting of a Luther prayer sung in Danish; a Praetorius Christmas anthem sung in Swedish, and music of Scandinavians Grieg and Nielsen. One hears out-of-the-ordinary and often exciting material. (Sono Luminus)

“Paisaje Urbano” casts the light on the IU Latin American Popular Music Ensemble. Two groups — the ensemble itself and El Taller — focus on music reflecting urban landscapes of Buenos Aires and Rio, music that blends classical elements with tango, jazz and bossa nova. The music and music-making make one want to dance and clap and shout. (IU Music)

“Eco de Violin,” a collection of contemporary Latin American music, gains traction from the duo work of violinist Colin Sorgi and pianist Jooeun Pak, grand prize winners of the Jacobs School’s First Latin American Music Recording Competition. Music is by Gabriela Lena Frank, Tania Leon, Juan Orrego-Salas, Paul Desenne and Miguel del Aguila. Some of it is avant-garde; some, traditional; some (particularly Desenne’s “Venezuelan Suite”) is provocatively Latin. (IU Music)

The ensemble Phantasm, including the Early Music Institute’s Wendy Gillespie, offers the “Complete Consort Music” of William Byrd, English music written during the Elizabethan Age 400 years ago. Bloomington Early Music Festival fans particularly will relish these stylistically pure readings. (Linn Records)

Renowned saxophonist Eugene Rousseau, long associated with the Jacobs School as distinguished professor, performs with the University of North Texas Symphony Orchestra on a new CD that features contemporary concertos by Libby Larsen and Henri Tomasi, along with “Lamentations (pour la fin du monde) for Alto/Soprano Saxophones and Orchestra” by IU’s Claude Baker, a brooding and beautiful response to recent natural and man-made tragedies, marvelously voiced on those saxophones by Rousseau (who is splendid in the other works as well). (www.jeanne-inc.com)

“An American Requiem,” with music by IU’s Edwin Penhorwood, is built evocatively and strikingly on words from the Latin Requiem Mass, Psalms and poetry by Callum MacColl. The music is honestly expressive of human existence and tragedies, of God’s judgment, of His grants of peace and rest. Gregory Fuller conducts the Choirs and Symphony Orchestra of the University of Southern Mississippi and the Meistersingers of Hattiesburg, who all do the Requiem proud. (University of Southern Mississippi)

“Venice of the North Concerti” contains violin and saxophone concertos and “Ania’s Song,” three works by IU alum James Aikman, a composer of imagination and technical skills. Each piece is distinctive. The concertos give the excellent soloists (violinist Charles Wetherbee and saxophonist Taimur Sullivan) some thrilling material. Orchestration throughout is masterful, and performances by the St. Petersburg State Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Vladimir Lande, are very good. (Naxos)

“In Eleanor’s Words” is an interesting soprano/piano song cycle by Stacy Garrop, who earned a degree from IU. The “Eleanor” is Eleanor Roosevelt, and Garrop’s often felicitous music accompanies words of the idolized first lady, those she wrote in her newspaper column and those that recount indelible moments in her life. Mezzo-soprano Buffy Baggott and pianist Kuang-Hao Huang perform. The CD also contains a piano trio by Garrop and a string quartet (played by the Biava Quartet, now disbanded, which used to appear during IU Summer Music Festivals). (Cedille)