Nils Landgren - Christmas with my Friends IX (2025) [Official Digital Download]

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9! Believe it or not, we’ve arrived at the ninth edition of ACT’s holiday institution, “Christmas with My Friends.”

For nearly two decades, the Swedish trombonist and vocalist Nils Landgren has turned what might have been a one-off studio experiment into a seasonal ritual cherished well beyond his native Scandinavia. The man with the trademark red trombone once again presides as master of ceremonies, surrounded by an ensemble of longtime collaborators who now feel as much like family as fellow musicians.

What began in 2006 as a modest recording project has quietly grown into one of the most enduring holiday series in contemporary jazz. Each album, released under the German ACT label—a house that has long positioned itself as Europe’s answer to Blue Note—draws together players rooted in classical training but shaped, ultimately, by jazz’s openness and elasticity. Landgren’s genius lies not in grand reinvention but in curation: his ability to choose the right mixture of hymns, carols, and secular pieces, and to shape them with arrangements that emphasize warmth, intimacy, and swing.

That curatorial sensibility is especially evident this year. Christmas With My Friends IX leans more decisively into jazz than some of its predecessors, opening up space for improvisation without losing the crystalline, acoustic purity that has become the series’ signature. At times, one forgets Landgren’s stature as an instrumentalist and is reminded instead of his rich, understated baritone, a voice that seems to carry equal parts joy and melancholy. The balance is key: this isn’t an album trying to dazzle with vocal acrobatics or technical fireworks. It’s about mood, generosity, and, as Landgren himself puts it, “putting our hearts and souls into every Christmas album.”

TRACKLIST

1 Trombone Choir
2 Christmas Is Here Again
3 Christmas With My Friends
4 Dormi, Jesu
5 All the Things I Know About Christmas
6 Grown-up Christmas List
7 It's That Time of the Year
8 Some Children See Him
9 Said Santa Claus to Mrs. Claus
10 Winter Wonderland
11 Corpus Christi Carol
12 Santa Will Sing the Blues
13 Music Speaks



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