Till Brönner's and Herb's Joy To The World

[martin]

The German jazz trumpeter Till Brönner made a very costly Christmas Album in 2007. He collaborated with a lot of top notch US artists and arrangers. I have owned the album since it came out, but I haven't been listening to it for a while. Yesterday, I put it on and was quite surprised. The album starts off with "We Wish You A Merry Christmas/Joy To The World". "We Wish.." is just an intro with solo trumpet and then the orchestra comes in on "Joy To The World". For a moment I thought I had put on the wrong record, or that it had magically switched to Herb's "The Christmas Wish". The orchestral intro on Brönner's album is exactly the same as on Herb's "Joy To The World". Even the instrumentation sounds totally identical and the key is the same. I checked the cover and, of course, Chris Walden was the arranger on that track. It appears he has taken the exact same arrangement and used it on Herb's album...
You can find Till Brönners recording on YouTube here:

Merry Christmas from the cold north -

Martin