Christmas Time Is Here: TTBB Choral Octavo

Deke Sharon's arrangement captures the tenderness of the original while giving your singers genuine harmonic material to navigate. The flexibility of TTBB voicing options means you can use this with nearly any ensemble size or voice distribution, making it genuinely useful year after year rather than a one-time special project.

Quiet reflection rather than celebration. The melody carries a bittersweet quality, anchored by the kind of jazz chords that suggest snow falling at dusk. There's intimacy in the arrangement; it's the sound of singers gathered close, singing something they genuinely mean.

Treble and mixed ensembles looking for holiday repertoire with actual musical substance. This works for groups with 8 to 24 singers, skilled enough to manage a cappella intonation but not necessarily experienced in jazz harmony.

• Find the warmth in the harmonic movement rather than pushing for volume; these chords reward singers who listen horizontally to their line and vertically to the overall sound.
• Balance the familiar melody against the supporting voices. The song succeeds when your audience hears the tune immediately while noticing the crafted harmony underneath.
• Let silence and space breathe as much as the singing itself. A cappella performance demands careful phrase shaping and release precision to avoid cloudiness.

Pair this with contrasting festive selections to create dynamic concert programming. The understated elegance makes it ideal for concert closings or program transitions where you want to shift audience energy toward reflection. It also works well as a featured moment mid-program when singers need to demonstrate control and blend rather than power.

• Sustaining intonation across jazz harmonies without instrumental support
• Balancing an exposed melody against four-part harmony
• Shaping phrases through breath control in a cappella contexts
• Reading accidentals and non-traditional harmonic movement
• Blending voices while maintaining individual line independence