"Christmas music is special to both of us.  This collection features some of our favourite Christmas songs.  On it are carols for solo harp - Carlos Salzedo's marvelous arrangements, including two of his Concert Variations (O Tannenbaum and O Come All Ye Faithful); a carol for marimba and drums (Robin arranged and played both parts!); and most especially, carols for harp and marimba.  The harp and marimba are both unusual instruments.  Together, they create a wonderful sound. 

As you can imagine, there aren't any Christmas carols arranged for harp and marimba, so we did our own arrangements.  (Except for O Holy Night; Canadian composer Sylvia Rickard wrote us this lovely arrangement).

It was great fun creating these arrangements and bringing them to life.  I particularly enjoyed writing Medley of the Bells and fitting five carols together.

O Come, O Come, Emmanuel is one of our favourite arrangements to play, and makes good use of the rich, enveloping sound the two instruments can produce.

Unlike most of the carols, we ad-lib quite a bit when playing Jingle Bells.  We have a framework that we follow, but each time we play it, it's different.  We're very happy with the cut on this CD.

The Drumming Medley is a collection of carols that refer to drums (well, Fum, Fum, Fum doesn't, but the tune sounds as if it should).  For the first two carols, Pat-A-Pan  and The Little Drummer Boy, Robin plays the snare drum.  Then he switches to the darabuka, "the universal drum of the Arab world," for Fum, Fum, Fum.

For Here Comes Santa Claus, Robin had to record the drum and marimba tracks separately, since it's obviously a little hard to play both the drum kit and the marimba at the same time!  But for Sleigh Ride, Robin played both the tambourine and the marimba at the same time; using his foot on the tambourine.

All told, there is quite a variety of sound and music on this CD.  We hope you have as much fun listening to these songs as we've had arranging and recording them!"

Josh and Robin Layne