Winter Solstice On Ice

From the crystalline textures of "Yesterday's Rain" to the edgy acoustic guitar in "What Child Is This," this album retains a Christmas mood, while taking you occasionally into a medieval forest. The second disc has a few more energetic selections with a bouncy "This Christmas" and then a mellow and comforting "Christmas Wish.""The Gift" is melancholy in mood, but a beautiful love duet that is hopeful and moody. "I Wish I Could" continues the melancholy mood and then funky jazz appears to break the mood and send you into mellow smooth starscapes."Esawayo" displays some beautiful instrumentation with vocals from a land far away. Samite also appears again with "Stars to Shine." Both songs had me looking for more of his music.~The Rebecca Review

Always perfect, mellow, exceptional selections on Winter Solstice series!

I agree w/ the majority of reviewers that the 2nd cd is horrible. It is definately worth (for a good price) it for the 1st cd alone. The 2nd one is all vocals and should be burnt in the fireplace on your yultide log sipping a cognac.

Beautiful

Great CD, would highly recommend.

I'd rather have a HARD copy of the CD over a digital download any day. Mp3's are lossy and with shipping It was far cheaper to buy a used CD. Saved $2 in the process over download.

I have more than 200 Christmas albums in my music collection. [Hey, it's my favorite time of the year!] And the Windham Hill "Solstice" series is among my favorites. The double-disc "On Ice" is no exception. [If you're wondering about the post-Christmas review, I can also be something of a cheapskate and I get most of my Christmas music half price during the week after Christmas.]This album is the musical companion to the A&E special "Winter Solstice On Ice." The two discs are mostly divided into instrumental (disc 1) and vocal (disc 2) tracks with both discs presenting a variety of both contemporary and traditional songs.Disc 1 highlights include Liz Story's lovely "Joy to the World," George Winston's playful "Skating" (from Linus and Lucy), the LA Guitar Quartet's "4 Variations on Twinkle Twinkle Little Star," and the late Michael Hedges stately reading of "What Child Is This."Disc 2 highlights include Tuck and Patti's "Christmas Wish," Hiroshima's take on "Silent Night" with its harp-like koto, and Samite's "Esawayo."This is Christmas music so enchanting that you'll want to play it all year long. RECOMMENDED

First off, let me say that I'm a huge fan of the Winter Solstice CD series from Windham Hill. I have them all, and listen to them religiously from November 1st through New Year's Day. Some I love more than others. This two disc collection is easily the worst of the bunch, swaying far away from the initial style of the previous releases. The term "Sell Out" quickly comes to mind, as this was released in conjunction with a TV special that aired on A&E.Although disc 1 sticks closest to the Windham Hill sound, many of the tracks can be found on previous releases, which is a bit disappointing. Still, there are a few gems to be found, like Variations on Twinkle Twinkle Little Star by the L.A. Guitar Quintet and a wonderfully rousing version of First Noel by Sean Harkness.And then we come to disc 2.As many of my fellow reviewers have already mentioned, it does indeed veer off into other musical idioms, including mellow r&b, second-rate adult contemporary pop, a smattering of smooth jazz and some other songs which I'll get to in a moment. Jeffrey Osborne's This Christmas isn't so bad and Phil Perry's silky smooth vocals are put to good use on the song Winter. Jim Brickman writes a couple of annoyingly sappy songs, Your Love and The Gift. Hiroshima (whom I usually like) performs one of the worst versions of Silent Night ever and The Rippingtons (whom I also usually like) perform a loud, crass number called Black Diamond.And it gets even worse from here!Nigthtnoise's Snow is Lightly Falling, which was on a previous Winter Solstice collection, and David Arkenstone's The Ice Palace are the only two remaining numbers that make the grade. As for the others, The White Palace by Uman is the kind of soulless, Eurotrash technobabble that gives New Age Music a bad name, Yanni's Santorini sounds like a reject from the 1988 Summer Olympics, and Mark Isham's Mr. Moto's Penguin plods along with all the melodic zip of a misfiring distributor cap.And who's idea was it to include not one, but two numbers from Samite? I don't mean to sound overly xenophobic, but if these discs are supposedly celebrating the Winter Season, doesn't it seem inappropriate to have someone singing in Swahili? On a side note, Samite also appears on the very Windham Hillish sounding On a Winter's Night CD from Imaginary Road. Even though his Yagaba song is only a minute and forty-five seconds long, that's still a minute forty-five too long for the likes of me.

Friend loved this as a present