Justin Time /

No
Title
Duration
Excerpts
01
Gregorian Chant
00:00:47
ogg      mp3      
02
Gloria In Excelsis Deo
00:01:55
ogg      mp3      
03
Remember
00:04:00
ogg      mp3      
04
Quel Est L'enfant Qui Est Né Ce Soir
00:02:44
05
Wohl mir daß ich Jesum habe
00:04:19
06
Over My Head
00:04:58
07
Stille Nacht (Ô Nuit De Paix) (Silent Night)
00:04:51
08
Go Tell It On The Mountain
00:03:17
09
Amazing Grace
00:04:41
10
Kings Of Orient
00:04:40
11
Geographical Fugue For Speaking Chorus
00:03:00
12
Calypso Christmas Medley: Joy To The World / O Come All Ye Faithful / Les Anges Dans Nos Campagnes (Angels We Have Heard On High)
00:07:40
13
Amen
00:04:25

Album Details

Don't let the title of this CD fool you. To be sure, it happens to be the title of a perennially popular Christmas carol, sung merrily on high with the coming of each holiday season. Yet this is no Yuletide platter in the pop tradition of Bing and Boney M. For Trevor Payne and the Montreal Jubilation Gospel Choir, joy is not only to be found under a Christmas tree. Joy is a year-round thing. The exultant foot-stomping gospel we have come to expect from Jubilation has not been forgotten, they've at long last cut their most popular song, Amazing Grace as well as their roof-raising version of Go Tell It On The Mountain. The CD closes with the Amen from Handel's Messiah, completing the cycle. Excerpts from the liner notes of Andrew Jones

Liner Notes

An Ode To Joy

Don't let the title of this CD fool you. To be sure, it happens to be the title of a perennially popular Christmas carol, sung merrily on high with the coming of each holiday season. Yet this is no Yuletide platter in the pop tradition of Bing and Boney M. For Trevor Payne and The Montreal Jubilation Gospel Choir, joy is not only to be found under a Christmas tree. Joy is a year-round thing.

True, Trevor Payne's initial idea was to take gospel arrangements of popular Christmas carols and have the Choir sing them in different languages. (Since the Choir has become enormously popular in Germany, France, Spain, Italy, and Japan, who is in a better position to bring joy to the world?) Yet this polyglot concept evolved until Payne found himself with scores for piano, organ, double bass, drums, flute, saxophone, guitar, lute, harp, balafon, shékéré and a Trinidadian percussion ensemble and the makings of a world music CD. Yet because the Choir has progressively met new challenges head on with each successive release-from live gospel recordings (Highway To Heaven) through a studio recording of classic Negro spirituals (Jubilation IV: A Cappella) to the highwire concept of mixing gospel with avant-garde jazz (The Song Of Songs) -Joy To The World provided the perfect opportunity for the Choir to test its vocal and spiritual mettle.

The game is afoot from the start, as an African percussionist improvises behind the tenors, basses and baritones intoning the opening Kyrie of the Roman Catholic Mass in Gregorian chant set in 'parallel organum'. This segues into the happening, upbeat, and tonal "in excelsis Deo" of Vivaldi's setting for the Mass' Gloria, which Payne has stacked with a Hammond B-3 organ and pizzicato string bass. Along with soprano sax, double bass and drums, the soulful tones of the organ underpin Bach's famous Jesu, Joy Of Man's Desiring. Other striking and unusual touches include the speaking chorus of Ernst Toch's Geographical Fugue, fashioned along the strict contrapuntal lines of a Bach fugue and spoken over a Trinidadian tassa band; and the brilliant 6/8 afro-jazz take of Kings of Orient, with its extended jazz solo for flute, piano and djembé, and the choir leaping up to the chorus in 7/8 time. Perhaps tipping his hat to Rashaan Roland Kirk, Payne calls this carol the CD's jazz thing."

The exultant, foot-stomping gospel we have come to expect from Jubilation has not been forgotten: They've at long last cut their most popular song, Amazing Grace, there's a roof-raising version of Go Tell It On The Mountain, a gospel arrangement of Silent Night -- the most popular Christmas carol worldwide-sung in German, French and English and a breathtaking rendition of Over My Head. After the housequake calypso/high-life medley of Joy To The World, O Come All Ye Faithful and Les Anges Dans Nos Campagnes, the CD closes with the Amen from Handel's Messiah, completing the cycle and confirming what Trevor Payne and The Montreal Jubilation Gospel Choir have known all along: joy knows no country, no season, no language. The Lord may have scattered our lingo when he created Babel, but music will always be our mother tongue.

- Andrew Jones