The beautiful day Kurt Elling sings Christmas (2016)

"A poetic and lyrical holiday-themed album, vocalist Kurt Elling's "The Beautiful Day" is much more than a seasonal production. The album follows up his eclectic 2015 album, "Passion World", and arrives on the heels of his collaboration with saxophonist Branford Marsalis, 2016's "Upward Spiral". Here, Elling applies his urbane sensibilities and warm baritone to a set of thoughtfully curated traditional songs reworked in his own sophisticated, harmonically rich fashion. However, as his first ever holiday-themed effort, Elling chose to sidestep the usual cull of Christmas songs and instead picked pieces that are lesser known, or more subtle in tone. The result is a production that is as literate and full of new discoveries as his previous studio albums. An album that evokes the holiday spirit in all of its wondrous complexity." (Matt Collar, Allmusic; 4 uit 5 sterren)