The Holidays’ Album Celebrates Female Composers

While female vocalists like Mariah Carey and Ariana Grande have a stronghold on modern holiday music playlists, pianist Chloe Flower wanted to highlight a lesser known group of women with her new wintertime album: classical composers.

“I’ve heard probably ten thousand versions of Handel’s ‘Messiah’ and like five-hundred thousand versions of ‘Sleigh Ride,’” says Flower, whose previous holiday album featured jaunty piano renditions of popular holiday songs — including, yes, “Sleigh Ride.” “I realized that none of the music in concert halls being performed during the holidays is written by women.”

That realization led her to shine a light on female composers with the release of her new “core classical” album “She Composed: The Holidays.” “This is the first time anyone has ever done a holiday album of all female composers,” says Flower. “Historically they’ve been so  underrepresented and also under heard, listened to, and underplayed.”

The album includes new arrangements of Christmas-specific songs by early composers like Kassiani, who was born around 840 AD and is the oldest known female composer whose work has been preserved, and Hildegard von Bingen, a Benedictine nun working around the turn of the first millennium. “They were really cool women. And so I looked at not just the musical, but also the story behind the composer,” says Flower. 

She also highlights the more contemporary classical music space, including American composers Linda Kachelmeier, Undine Smith Moore, and Florence Price, who was the first African American woman to have her music played by a national orchestra. Price’s lush instrumental “Song for Snow” opens the album, followed by a second version with choral and orchestra accompaniment. 

“I didn’t expect to include so many Americans on my album,” says Flower. “As a classical musician, I often play a lot of European artists. And so that was really surprising to me; I really hear the synthesizing of American sound and classical music,” she adds. “That coming together of two different cultures.”

Flower’s collaborators on the album include Julliard School dean David Ludwig, who helped with the orchestration and arrangements for “O viridissima virga” and “When Augustus Reigned.” After recording with the Academy of St Martin in the Fields orchestra, executive director Tim Davy told Flower that he wanted to add the piece to the academy’s holiday performance program. 

“That’s kind of the whole point, that we acclimate ears to open up to new holiday songs in the classical space,” says Flower, adding that many of her collaborators were previously unfamiliar with the songs featured on the album. 

“The change happens in the concert hall. So it was really exciting for me to create these arrangements,” she says. “When I go to concerts and I ask specifically, why aren’t you playing more music written by women? [The conductors] are like, oh, well we don’t have the arrangements; I don’t know the arrangement,” Flower adds. “That is a problem, so hopefully this will inspire other composers or even just players who can arrange to experiment with these songs in different ways.”

The final track on the album is a hip-hop inspired remix of Fanny Mendelssohn’s “December (No. 12 from Das Jahr, H. 385),” rendered in Flower’s signature hip-hop inspired “popsical” sound. “ You know me,” she says. “I have to throw in a beat every once in a while.” Flower, who calls R&B musician Babyface a mentor, notably performed onstage with Cardi B at the Grammys in 2019 and often covers pop songs. In September, she performed an arrangement of “Running Up That Hill” and Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” with a choir and organ during Prabal Gurung’s runway show.

Following the album’s release on November 7, she has concerts scheduled in Aspen, CO; Rockport, MA, and at Joe’s Pub in New York over the next month.

Beyond the album’s focus on classical female talent — an aspect most casual listeners will be unaware of — Flower’s intention was also to create a holiday and wintertime album reflective of the season’s cheery nature. “I was looking for pieces that made me feel joy,” she says. “I think that’s the best part about the holidays.”