“We met in the mid 1990’s at the Classical Guitar Festival of Great Britain at West Dean near Chichester. We found each other again in recent years on social media and planned this recording during the Covid Lockdown.

The recording process has been a most intense and joyful experience for us in the legendary Abbey Road Studio. We had a wonderful time working with the phenomenal Andrew Dudman, who has been responsible for the audio of major movies such as the Lord of the Rings trilogy, Mary Poppins Returns and Into the Woods. It has also been wonderful to work with so many eminent composers providing new Christmas songs covering a wide range of themes and emotions. We have also enjoyed the coaching and production skills of friend and guitarist Michael Durrant.

We are pleased to share five World Premières, seven traditional Christmas songs in the most delighful new arrangements, two Spanish Christmas originals and three Winter day-dreams: all beautiful works by composers that are most dear to us. These include Vincent Lindsey-Clark’s two beautiful miniatures on Neil’s childhood memories, Nicholas a catchy father Christmas song, Wouter’s heartfelt song for those who have lost a loved one, Irina’s personal goodbye to her first guitar teacher Victor Kozlov – a composer and guitarist taken away from us by Covid-19 – and a jazzy Winter Russian song from Konstantin who also provides many of the wonderful guitar accompaniments.

We hope you enjoy this music as much as we do. Share it with your loved ones. Bring some light to the people that face the holidays in loneliness. Merry Christmas!”

Irina & Neil