***1/2

A CHRISTMAS ALBUM

(Arsis)

This all-American disc from Boston composer Rodney Lister and the Choir of the Church of the Advent has both more musical interest and a more genuine sense of religious devotion than I get from most of the Holy Minimalists and other purveyors of fashionably spiritual music. The centerpiece of the disc, and one of the best Christmas pieces I know, is Lister's Kings and Shepherds, for three singers with violin, oboe, French horn, and organ, on a starkly formal sequence of poems, both narrative and meditative, by the Scottish poet George Mackay Brown. Lister's stark yet passionate setting contrasts long pedal tones with frantic instrumental activity. The vocal lines are plain but with a wayward tonality and often dissonant layerings. Equally plain are Virgil Thomson's tender Scenes from the Holy Infancy, rendered in a combination of Anglican chant and Southern hymnody. The smaller works range from Thomson's sweetly triadic setting of The Holly and the Ivy to Carlisle Floyd's haunting Long, Long Ago to Lister's clear but inventive choral arrangements of traditional carols, which reclaim this genre from the commercial arrangers.

-- Scott Wheeler