Be it for a stocking stuffer, personal gift or backdrop to a holiday gathering, Glissandi’s generous array of Christmas favourites is sure to please. This trio of Niagara’s finest musicians have come together and rendered twenty-one tracks with a variety of colours and shadings that keep the ear engaged and the imagination conjuring up heaps of happiness and joy. Douglas Miller brings his considerable talent (he also produced the disc) using a covey of instruments including flutes (soprano, alto, bamboo and Irish) piccolo and recorders to paint the melodic lines from the ethereal calm of “Huron Carol” through a hauntingly eerie “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel” to a remarkable rendition of “I Am so Glad” that even has a splash of Brandenburg. All of the arrangements are convincingly anchored by harpist Deborah Braun, including two solos: “Infant Holy” and “Away in a Manger,” whose childlike opening morphs into adulthood before slipping back with innocent delight. Violin interventions from David Braun, both melody (“Greensleeves”) and accompaniment (“Of the Father’s Love Begotten”) add another layer of interest. Still, the highlight comes from Berlioz (“Trio” from L’Enfance du Christ), which features the best balance (elsewhere, recording engineer Jeff Wolpert succumbs to the allure of over-reverberation) and harmonic excursions of which the carols’ composers can only dream. JWR