50 heads (voices) are better than one

I love to sing. I sing in the shower, in the car, while I’m doing laundry, cleaning, or even sitting at my desk trying to write. My love for singing in a chorus began by taking it as an elective in 8th grade. The following year I skipped it because I heard some unfavorable things about my high school chorus teacher, who was married to my 8th grade chorus teacher. Later I realized that regardless of whether he was difficult or not, that shouldn’t keep me from enjoying singing in a choir.

Anyway. Tenth, eleventh, and twelfth grades I took chorus again. I was in Advanced Women’s Chorus, which I actually had to try out for. It wasn’t hard except for my crumbling stage fright (that pretty much kept me from trying out for the parts in any musicals). My favorite time was our holiday concerts. While sometimes my teacher was a huge douche (and of course, at 15 and 16 everyone that offended me in the least could have been considered as such) he picked out the most gorgeous songs for us to sing. One year (I think 11th or 12th grade) he chose two songs out of this compilation of Medieval carols and chants by this no-name group of singers who incidentally called themselves the Anonymous Four. At 16, I didn’t listen to music outside the realms of Tori Amos, Korn and Tool (yes, laugh if you want to).

But this? This spoke to me. In one of those cheesy “this song will change your life, man” kind of way. The voices resonate like a choir in a medieval church (and I think the songs were actually recorded in a church). I liked it so much that I actually bought it that same year for myself. Now it’s a standard in my Christmas CD collection. I thought in the spirit of the upcoming holidays, that I would share my love of nontraditional Christmas music.

Enough blabbering.

Listen for yourself.