Garritan User Community Offers Free Christmas Album Download

The user community of computer-savvy composers and arrangers, working with the Garritan Personal Orchestra digital sound library, have come together to release their second annual holiday album, which is freely downloadable in MP3 format here.

22 composers from the United States, Great Britain, Iceland, Italy and Slovenia have provided their original recordings of holiday favorites. To complete the package, you may also download CD cover art, a CD label, and complete liner notes from the Web site.

This album of intriguing virtual orchestral holiday favorites, all created digitally on personal computers, is just the thing for listening at work, loading into your iPod, or burning onto audio CD to make gifts and stocking stuffers for all the music lovers in your life.

A Garritan Personal Orchestra Christmas 2005 is a collaborative effort of the Garritan Personal Orchestra community and was put together in the spirit of giving for the holiday as a way for forum members to give back to the community.

A GPO Christmas 2005 is a unique musical project that would have been impossible a few short years ago. This is the second volume of a holiday musical tradition like no other. Each of these orchestral recordings were made not with large, live orchestras in vast recording studios at huge expense, but rather were created by a single person working on a computer. What they have in common is the Garritan Personal Orchestra, a commercial computer software "composer's toolbox" of digital samples of real acoustic orchestral instruments.

The frequently stunning realism of the recordings on this album are a testament not only to the sophistication of personal computer technology, but also to the skill of the composers, arrangers and programmers who have used these tools so remarkably well.

The Music:

1. "The Christmas Song (Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire)" Dan Kury

2. "Away In a Manger" Jack Cannon

3. "I Saw Three Ships" Pat Azzarello

4. "O Come All Ye Faithful" Stefan Kristinsson

5. "In Dulci Jubilo" Dan Powers

6. "What Sweeter Music" David Lovrien

7. "December Song" Jerry Wickham

8. "Carol Of The Bells" Jonny Lost

9. "It Came Upon The Midnight Clear" Robert Myers

10. "Now A Savior Is Born Unto Us" Matej Hrovat

11. "The Wexford Carol" Jim Williams

12. "Those Jingly Bells" Jon Raybould

13. "Un Flambeau Jeannette, Isabelle/Stille Nacht" Mark Leneker

14. "Pat-a-Pan" Paula Douglas

15. "Snow Travel" Eric Watkins

16. "Here We Come A Wassailing" Sean Hannifin

17. "Good King Wenceslas" Dan Estes

18. "Tu scendi dalle Stelle" Fabio Vicentini

19. "We Three Kings" Stephanie Pray-Urech

20. "O Holy Night" Leif Chappelle

21. "What Child Is This?" Toby Bresnahan

22. "Angels We Have Heard On High" Jim Hammer