Best Holiday CDs?

Sinatra's Jolly X-mas on MoFi is pretty good. BUT, the old time best for me, and also my standard test CD for male vocals, is a CD of traditional X-mas music sung in Enlgish by an Italian group called Neri Per Caso. The group is composed of three brothers and their two cousins, all men in their mid twenties from Naples (a city with a great vocal tradition). They are actually a successful pop group in Italy, with at least one # 1 hit a few years back (Le Ragazze). The thing is, most of their songs are sung entirely a cappella, they do amazing 5 part harmony, and they have a wizard for a recording engineer. Their version of "God Rest Ye.." will raise goosebumps on your arm..and my Guarneri's LOVE these guys (must be an Italian thing). On some songs from their most recent CD's,the soundstage is truly wrap-around. Not sure where you'd get it in the US..but this disc is THAT good. Wish I could let you all borrow my copy....

Steve/Tubegroover - I'll do better. I will ask my borther to burn a copy on his CD-R and mail it to one of you as X-mas present PROVIDED you pass it on to the other one. Let me know if you are interested. Who wants to be first? As for the details - here's the full discography of the group 1. Neri Per Caso - "Le Ragazze" 1995 Easy Records Italiana (distributed by Sony Music). Catalog number ESY 478565 2. Debut album, in Italian, all a cappella. Printed in Holland 2. Neri Per Caso "Strumenti"1996 ESY 48311 2 (Sony/BMG). Second album, some instruments introduced, but mostly percussion and sparingly used. In Italian. Trakc s 4, 6, 7, and 9 are absolutley brilliant (holographic, wrap around soundstaging) 3. Neri Per Caso (no title) 1997. EMI Music Italy EMI 4 93132 0. Interactive CD. My least fave., bu very cool a cappella version of Jamming. Mostly in Italina 4. Neri Per Caso (no title). This is the X-mas album. Need to get it back from my brother for details. Sorry! Released in 1998 and, as far as I know, the only album they did that year.

By the way..apologies for the typos. Life is too short to spell check! ( but I DO know how!)

Steve/Tubegroover - I mailed the CD ROM copy to Steve last week. He shold be getting this week. Would love to hear what you think, so please post and/or send me a private e-mail. I recevied ther latest CD (ANgelo Blu), and was disappointed. There are only two a cappella songs in the the disc, and the rest is a bit too "pop" for me. However..one of the a cappella offerings is an awesome arrangement of The Beatles "Here, There and Everywhere". Still, if you want to listen to other stuff by them, recommend you stick with "Le Ragazze" which was 100% vocal.

I own a couple of Mormon Tabernacle LP's w/ Ormandy, but have always been disappointed at the sound. My preferred large scale choral music so far is in the Solti Mahler 8th, but would love to dicover others. Any recommendations?