New York City Children's Chorus Christmas in New York

The New York City Children s Chorus (NYCCC) is pleased to present its second album, Christmas in New York. Before we sang the final notes of our 2015 debut album, Simple Gifts, we knew this project was waiting for us, and for you. The phrase 'Christmas in New York' is spoken with great excitement by millions of tourists who visit our city in hopes of capturing the joy and beauty that buoys our spirits each December. For New Yorkers, it means treks to the Metropolitan Museum of Art to see the Baroque Crêche or the Natural History Museum s Origami Tree; hearing Musica Sacra singing Handel s Messiah at Carnegie Hall; or stopping to see the decorated windows of favorite shops and sample the seasonal sweets from a favorite bakery. For the New York City Children s Chorus, Christmas in New York means singing our favorite holiday carols and songs. The glee our children express when they open their folders and find Carol of the Bells and Deck the Hall are only rivaled by the joy I feel in teaching these Christmas favorites, year after year. In reflecting on the experience of making this album, I find myself extremely proud of the NYCCC choristers commitment to performing such a wide variety of music with beauty, style and integrity, and I am delighted to share it with you. [Mary Huff, October 2019]

The NYCCC at Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church is a graded choral program for children in the metropolitan New York City area who wish to receive training in the art of singing in a rigorous and rewarding choral environment. Founded in 2012, the NYCCC is comprised of nine choral ensembles for children ages four through eighteen, steeped in the bel canto tradition, exploring a range of music from Bach to Broadway. The advanced performing ensembles heard in this recording have appeared at New York s most prestigious venues, including Carnegie Hall, Radio City Music Hall, St. Patrick's Cathedral, Cathedral of St. John the Divine and Town Hall. Recent appearances include performances of Vaughan Williams' Sancta Civitas, J.S. Bach's St. Matthew Passion and appearances on NBC's Today Show and Amazon Video's The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. The NYCCC has also performed famous works by Schubert, Britten, Faure and Vaughan Williams. The choristers have performed concert tours in Boston, Nashville and Washington, D.C., and abroad in Austria, Canada, Germany and Spain.

Mary Wannamaker Huff is Artistic Director of the New York City Children s Chorus and Associate Director of Music at Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church, where she conducts and plays the organ for liturgies and concerts with the church choirs and the Saint Andrew Chorale and Orchestra. Her children's choirs have toured internationally and performed in New York City s concert halls, churches and on television. They have also sung for the Tribeca Film Festival, Nintendo and joined Nathan Lane in The Man Who Came to Dinner. Individual choristers under Huff's guidance have performed in Broadway shows and at the Museum of Modern Art; one of her chorister's solo performances in Leonard Bernstein's Chichester Psalms was hailed as one of New York Magazine's Top Ten Classical Events in NYC.

Andrew Henderson has served as Director of Music and Organist at Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church since 2005, where he oversees an extensive liturgical and choral program and the Saint Andrew Music Society's Music on Madison concert series. Dr. Henderson, also the Associate Organist at New York City's Temple Emanu-El, is chair of the organ department at the Manhattan School of Music and the organ instructor at Teachers College at Columbia University. A native of Thorold, Ontario, he holds degrees in music from Cambridge, Yale and The Juilliard School.