It’s December, and Christmas music is everywhere. Artists from Billie Eilish to Taylor Swift, John Legend to Ed Sheeran, Kelly Clarkson to Ariana Grande – and of course Mariah Carey – have made contemporary holiday songs a hugely popular part of the season.
Now Frost School of Music student artists are joining them with “A Very Frosty Christmas,” putting their own creative spin on eight classic Christmas songs, from “O Holy Night” to “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas.”
“I love all types of Christmas music, the classic as well as the new pop versions,” says vocal performance major Nicole Acosta, whose version of “I’ll Be Home For Christmas,” the beloved 1943 Bing Crosby hit recorded by everyone from Frank Sinatra to Al Green to Camila Cabello, opens the album. “It feels really cool that we’re getting to cover a Christmas song and make it our own.”
Frost School student artists on "A Very Frosty Christmas" (clockwise from upper left) Beyond Treeline, MAEVE, Jason Fieler, Nicole Acosta. All photos courtesy of the artists.
The project was created and organized by Media Scoring and Production (MSP) senior Ian Miller. He got the idea last year after a film and commercial music company where he interns brought him in to work on a popular, longtime holiday concert produced by the Old Cutler Presbyterian Church, which mixed pop, hip-hop, a gospel choir, a rock band, and a 40-piece string orchestra. Miller played piano and wrote arrangements for the band, choir, and orchestra. He was also inspired.
“All these groups came together on all these Christmas standards; it was eclectic and interesting but still in the spirit of Christmas,” Miller says. He thought a Christmas album could leverage the perpetual popularity of seasonal favorites to bring attention to Frost School artists building their identity and following, while combining their individual audiences into something larger. “People are always going to be nostalgic and enjoy Christmas music, so this was a convincing way to get people on board with collaborating,” he says.
Miller was also inspired by his close friend and roommate Winston Thayer, co-creator and producer of last spring’s Rock Symphonic, a massive student-produced concert bringing together pop and rock artists from the Modern Artist Development and Entrepreneurship (M.A.D.E.) program with classical music students. “I used Rock Symphonic as a case study on how to do student collaboration and get people excited,” Miller says.
Miller has served as a resource and organizer, while each of the eight artists was responsible for their individual tracks: playing, singing, arranging, recording, and bringing in other students as needed to produce, engineer, or play additional instruments. They recorded in the MSP studio in the Weeks Music Library, the main Weeks Recording Studio, and at home. The student designed cover depicts the soaring windows of the Knight Center for Music Innovation looking over an improbably frozen Lake Osceola.
Each artist added their own style to their chosen song. Jason Fieler does an extended solo piano version of “O Holy Night,” while MAEVE did “We Three Kings” in folk style. Cheesecake renders the “Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy” from Tschaikovsky’s “The Nutcracker” as funk fusion; Beyond Treeline plays the goofy “Grandma Got Run Over By a Reindeer” as bluegrass; while alternative rockers Lawn take on “Christmas Time is Here” and hard rockers Skyrise do “This Christmas.”
Louis Brumm, leader of soul/funk band Puddley, said they thoroughly enjoyed recording “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas.” “I’ve always loved classic Christmas music, and this seemed like such a fun opportunity for my band and me to put our own spin on a classic,” Brumm says. “We made the song our own by adapting it to have a super laid-back groove, leaving lots of space to create this bouncy feel. We also reharmonized it quite a bit. Our goal was to change the song enough to make it our own while maintaining that intangible Christmas magic.”
While Brumm hopes that holiday musical magic will boost Puddley’s profile, he says the project has already cast a spell on them. “We’ve all had so much fun being part of this and can’t wait for everyone to be able to give it a listen,” he says.
Acosta, a junior in M.A.D.E. who’s already tasted mainstream attention as a contestant in Fox’s “I Can See Your Voice” and singing for the Miami Marlins and Gloria and Emilio Estefan, took an ambitious approach to “I’ll Be Home.” She worked with Thayer, her producer, and co-arranger, to record with a pianist and drummer from the jazz program and create an orchestral sound with a violinist who recorded multiple parts to replicate a string section and horns programmed on a Midi, recording in the MSP and main Weeks studio. “I always thought it was a beautiful song, but also a song you can do a lot with to make it your own,” she says. “I’m doing it in a jazzy way, but I’m also gonna have a little bit of soul in my voice and add riffs and a big moment at the end.”
Acosta hopes creativity, collaboration, and the seasonal spirit will work some holiday magic. “I wanted to show I could do all these things,” she says. “And I love Christmas. Artists release Christmas covers all the time. There might be people who like your version better than the original. You never know what can happen.”
“A Very Frosty Christmas” is available on all major digital platforms, including Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube, Pandora, and Soundcloud.
