NEIL PATTON, Gloria: Piano For Christmastide

In a culture where Christmas is often celebrated by non-religious or “spiritual but not religious” people as a secular holiday, it’s not surprising that some of the most acclaimed and popular seasonal solo piano recordings have come from artists who don’t specifically identify as Christians. Immediately coming to mind are the late George Winston’s seminal album December, several by David Lanz and a few decades worth of excellent holiday collections by Jim Brickman. These are all great artists and works I listen to every year, and serious musts for holiday playlists of piano fans everywhere.

For all the magic those artists have blessed us with, in all honesty, there’s a certain authenticity that comes from artists whose passion for the hymnal music of Christmas is rooted not in an aesthetic of snowflakes, sleigh rides and Santa Claus but in the heart, soul, life and world changing birth of Christ - the true “reason for the season,” as the adage goes.

Had I never known that multiple award- winning solo pianist Neil Patton was a worship pastor for 27 years before leaving the pulpit to create music full time, I still would have put his emotionally impactful, beautifully crafted and warmly and dynamically played first Christmas album, the perfectly titled Gloria: Piano for Christmastide, at the top of my must-listen to holiday recordings  of 2025.

As it traverses the celebration of Jesus’ birth from exuberant exclamations to solemn, sacred contemplation of the wonder and mystery of God, it’s seriously one of those majestic piano works that bears repeated listening, both as an active sensory experience and as the soundtrack to cozy nights with family, friends and a special loved one. Yet knowing of his lifelong devotion to Christ, it comes alive as a powerful expression of faith and touches the heart in transcendent, divinely graced ways that many piano albums by more secular artists simply cannot. From the gentle, hypnotic opening notes of the initially meditative, then more spirit infused arrangement of “O Come, O Come Emmanuel” to the elegant, life-giving tender mercies of “Silent Night” Gloria is not just Christmas music – it’s music as an act of worship, using familiar pieces to draw listeners into a deeper understanding of the meaning of “love’s pure light.”   

Ironically, while Neil’s fans have been requesting a Christmas album for years, he found that every time he started in, the grind of his weekly pastoral work became a creative block. “I believe my work as a worship pastor, where weeks of preparation and services were full of Christmas music, dulled the excitement that this music would usually bring to me,” he says. “It requires playing these kinds of songs for months during the summer and fall. It just felt like work, rather than inspiration. Since retiring from vocational ministry in 2022, I’ve had time to get some distance. This past spring, I realized I was finally ready. In June, my wife Cathy and I took a trip to the Oregon Coast, and I brought a digital piano and laptop with me. I spent the weekend trying ideas and improvisations – and recorded all of them. I pulled these eleven songs from those sessions and began to work on them in earnest.”

Neil believes that Gloria builds on his nearly two-decade catalog of solo piano music – which spans from Impromptu – Solo Piano to The Small Hours (2024) – by allowing him to re-imagine music that is well-known to many people. His challenge? To re-invent these masterpieces without sacrificing their original spirit and intention. When he recorded his 2022 hymn album Holy Ground – to date, his only specifically themed set of Christian music – he improvised the arrangements with minimal planning to simulate the experience and conversations of prayer. With Gloria, he took the time to process and plan the music, an approach that gave him the space to explore more harmonic and rhythmic avenues. Gloria is a, well, frankly quite glorious addition to a discography noted for distinctive themes and melodic and harmonic flavors.   

Like most solo piano recordings, Gloria is best experienced not as individual tracks ripe for playlist picking but as a straight through listen that allows the listener to “feel” Neil’s unfolding, multi-faceted journey of faith in all its sonic, harmonic intricacies and rhythmically eclectic grandeur. As an example of the wave of emotions he imparts, he follows the aforementioned “O Come…” with the jubilant and exultant holy fire of “Joy to the World,” then simulates what it must have been like to see the unfolding miracle in the manger with an awestruck, soft-spoken and reflective take on the timeless German folk melody “Still Still Still.”

Likewise, Neil places the staid, relatively obscure (but no less magnificent) exploratory ballad “The Christ Child Lullaby” after the buoyant, telling it boldly on the mountain (and beyond to all who have ears to hear) “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing.” The exciting whirlwind of his fingers as they float speedily across the ivories feels like the quickening heartbeat of mankind as it realizes, on this holiest of nights and in the most unlikely of locales, that God has come in the flesh to be the Light of the World and rescue the fallen world.

Amidst the empowering waves of Spirit on Gloria, Neil includes a more personal element second in sacredness to his lifelong commitment to Christ – the stunning piano/flute duets on three pieces that serve as an expression of devotion to Cathy, his wife of 29 years and the bond they share with God and each other. On an album that is the pure, divinely inspired unleashing of musical heart and soul, these collectively form the heart and soul of the project. Cathy plays both regular and piccolo flutes on these finely polished musical gems. On “What Child Is This,” Neil plays the solemn first verse, before Cathy comes in for the second with her dreamy, soulful flute melody, which they cap with soaring, emphatic improvisations that reach the musical equivalent of the celestial realms.

Perhaps best known in contemporary music for Sting’s masterful vocal renditions, “Gabriel’s Message” – the one tune on the album that when sung features the word “Gloria” at the end of each refrain – is a unique selection that further showcases Cathy’s mastery in the intro before Neil begins his lyrical, free-flowing piano arrangement as a foundation beneath her numerous flights of fancy that feel like angels dancing as the deeper message of Christ’s arrival is conveyed.

Their third duet, “Emmanuel (God With Us),” is an enrapturing contemplative original composition by Neil, fashioned perfectly to weave his heartrending piano energy with her ethereal yet soul-deep musings and improvisations in a sea of freshly rendered familiarity – which also includes an infectious, easy rolling swirl through “It Came Upon a Midnight Clear” and the whimsical, uber-charming and breathlessly paced “Bring a Torch, Jeanette, Isabella” – Neil’s full-throttle declaration of God’s presence in human form stands out as the centerpiece of the album.

“I composed Emmanuel back in ’99,” the pianist reflects, “and we have performed it together many times over the years, though in a somewhat unfinished form. I finally took it apart and reassembled for this project. Recording together has been a joy, and an inspiring experience for both of us. We have already begun working together on a complete collaborative album, featuring not only her flute, but several instruments, both acoustic and electronic.”

As listeners open their minds and hearts to the underlying Gospel message driving the music, they should perhaps ponder why Neil chose the name Gloria for the project. For him, the Glory of God refers not only to His power and “otherness,” but also to His beauty, goodness and creativity. He offers some fascinating food for spiritual thought: “There is so much in creation that would seem to be a waste of time. How many species of frogs exist in the world? Why so many colors and kinds of trees? How many species of birds? Why sunsets and rainbows, and why should we respond to them the way we do?

“There are two trillion galaxies in the observable universe,” he adds, “and each galaxy may hold 100 to 400 billion stars. What a waste of time, right? What possible purpose would all of these serve? Yet here they are, and they are magnificent and beautiful and give life a sense of wonder. I believe this says much about the character of God, that His creation goes beyond the functional to the extravagant."

All of Neil’s music, and now this wonderful album, capture shards of light from this universal eternal story/mystery we are caught in. Though many remain skeptical of the historicity of the birth narratives in Matthew and Luke, there’s no denying that the power and glory of Christ manifest in humanity is, at its best and manifested by those who truly follow the path of righteousness, an undeniable, unexplainable gift that keeps on giving. Not only to those who believe or will believe, but to artists and creatives of all types throughout the centuries.

“There’s something about the story of God becoming human, and not just a man but a helpless baby born into poverty, that has captured the artist’s imagination to a huge degree,” Neil says. “This sense of mystery and wonder has inspired some of the most haunting, joyful and beautiful music in the western musical repertoire.

"Music has a way of breaking through our defenses and cynicism while getting to a deeper place in our minds and spirits," he adds. "C.S. Lewis described it as stealing past those ‘watchful dragons.’ Some have taken the Christian faith and turned it into an intellectual exercise. While the rational mind should certainly be involved, we sometimes forget the role of mystery when dealing with an eternal God. Music and other arts have the potential to bridge that gap and open us up to eternal truths and mysteries to which we might otherwise close ourselves off.”