Joan Baez is an artist we usually get to see with a guitar in her hands, mesmerizing with her powerful voice all around her. She’s an icon of the folk-rock world, and one of the loudest anti-establishment figures in the hippie era. Her performance at the Woodstock festival in 1969 is legendary, and she was an early promoter of Bob Dylan, at the beginning of the sixties. In 1966 she recorded this album, called ‘Noël’ which is, believe it or not, a Christmas album. But unlike most of Christmas releases, that have no real musical ambitions, this is a rather serious material, with exceptional arrangements of some well known religious songs. Joan Baez hooked up with arranger-conductor Peter Schickele, and this was their first effort from what would become a series of three albums that featured classical orchestration.
With medieval ballads comprising most of the album, it still sounds like a Joan Baez album, and not just some purpose-made, budget-refreshing album. Schickele’s arrangements are focused on showcasing Baez's angelic soprano voice, and that’s probably what makes this team a winning one. The orchestration that’s built around flutes, lutes, mandolins, harpsichord and similar instruments, perfectly suits her vocal expression and stylistically sits close to her previous albums. I guess that the effort which Schickele put in the score to match Baez’s style and character, got him the arrangers job spot on the next two of her releases. The album, strangely enough for the folk singer, also includes several short instrumentals, even some rarely recorded tunes, such as "Good King Wenceslas" and "Bring a Torch, Jeannette, Isabella."
I’m not a religious man and, trust me, I don’t own a collection of Christmas music. But this is more than that. It’s a shift from Joan Baez’s familiar guitar/voice setting into the realm of classical and religious music, which brought both Baez and this style of music a new fresh expression.
