Judy Collins was 33 years into her recording career before releasing her first formal holiday album, Come Rejoice! A Judy Collins Christmas, in 1994. It has only taken her three years to issue another.
Christmas at the Biltmore Estate, recorded live, is the audio complement to her cable-TV special, which finds her fronting her band and the Charlotte Children's Choir.
Collins repeats her seasonal original compositions, "Come Rejoice" and "All on a Wintry Night," from her previous Christmas album and adds her own new material to "Santa Claus Is Coming to Town" and a musical setting of "The Night Before Christmas." Since publishing her autobiography, Trust Your Heart, in 1987, the singer has tended to imbue her work with personal references, and never more so than here, as, in her stage remarks, she paints a detailed portrait of her own childhood Christmases with her parents and four siblings in Colorado. These reminiscences provide a context for the set of mostly traditional, and traditionally rendered, seasonal fare, with the choir joining in. As ever,
Collins' chief attribute is her beautiful voice, which is particularly well suited to this sort of material. Like her previous holiday album, this one is a bit on the formal side, even in the live setting, but it is given a more intimate tone by all the warm memories she evokes, even if they sound rehearsed. [In its original release, the album marked
Collins' one-off return to her old association with Elektra Records. The 2010 reissue by Collectors' Choice Music includes new liner notes by Richie Unterberger that benefit from an interview with
Collins.] ~ William Ruhlmann