The Promise: Jazz-Inspired Music for Advent and Christmas

So it’s Christmas.

It’s not, really, not yet – but mince pies are in the shops (and have been for some time 😸) and Christmas discs are piling up. So here’s the first of this year’s crop, released October 16 on Signum Classics: Will Todd’s jazz-inflected The Promise.

Here’s the promo reel (I was the first to give it a like on YouTube so maybe head over there and give it some love!):

The disc is segmented into two: Will Todd’s third large-scale jazz oratorio The Promise, followed by a sequence of “nine well-known carols with a twist,” under the title, A Jazz Christmas.

Funny how yesterday we had Jess Gillam in her new album, SHINE, and now a sax graces the firs movement, “I Look from Afar,” taken from a traditional Advent Responsory .Inevitably this mix of jazz and religiosity takes us into gospel territory:

The line “Deo gratias” suffuses “Four Thousand Winters,” which takes its text from a 15th-Century English Christian tract before we hear Latin in “Cónditor Alme Siderum,” the 17th-Century Latin Hymn, a heady jazz track which seems to rise in complexity and a resultant ecstasy:

The text for “The Angel Gabriel” is by Sabine Baring-Gould – this is a lovely late-night jazz song, with Bethany Halliday as silken-voiced soloist. It’s a real highlight. Quite right, too, that the concluding “Gloria” is nicely restrained, voice, piano and sax leading the movement to a close (Halliday returns for “O Oriens”; the choir here, St Martin’s Voices, is superb in its maintenance of quiet, the repetitions of “Hodie” encrusted by slow piano roulades; and she is soloist in “O Great Light,” which sets the passage in Isiah that includes “For unto us a child is born”):

It also feels right that the Magnificat is performed in Latin (“Magnificat anima mea Dominum”) as opposed to English (“My soul doth magnify the Lord”). The highly rhythmic section is the most successful; the opening blaze of light sounds a touch filmic to me.

We hear Es ist ein Ros’ entsprungen in English (A rose has sprung up), an Anonymous but most-loved text, here interior, the harmonies poignantly jazz-dissonant. The piece takes its title, though, from the song The Promise, with text by Todd himself, and sung by Haliday beautifully. Quiet, very much of Christmas in its harmonies, this does indeed seem to be the still point we’ve been waiting for:

The ensuing “On Them Will the Light Shine” is a jazz riot, Isaiah 9:2 as you’ve never previously heard it:

The Promise was premiered in Taiwan in December 2025 with the Soochow University Alumni Chorus and Will Todd at piano .

The jazz takes on a sheaf of Christmas Carols under the collective title of A Jazz Christmas that follows is great fun, beginning with a highly syncopated “God rest you merry”:

“Personet Hodie” continues the rhythmic enlivenment, but in rather less outgoing fashion. It is “In the bleak midwinter,” one of my favourite texts, that brings out the best in Todd:

That said, it is “Once in Royal” that is Todd’s master arrangement, the well-known theme distanced, and yet more magical:

Todd’s way of taking familiar material and placing it in new surroundings – old wine in new bottles, one might say, is highly skilful. Try “Away in a Manger,” and find yourself back in that late night jazz cafe:

Todd’s achievement is to create a coherent language that is his across all of this familiar territory: “I saw three ships” is less excitable than usual, but still carries energy; “Silent Night” positively invites meditation:

“We Three Kings” is similarly interior, but opens out nicely, lines added one y one to the baseline melody. Closer to the original is Mel Tormé’s heart-warming “Christmas Song” – and what a lovely way to close!:

A lovely disc, which acts as a gentle easing-in to the Christmas period and our ever-growing stack of discs!

The Promise is available at Amazon here. Streaming below.