The Story Behind How Art Garfunkel and Amy Grant Made a Christmas Album Together

In 1983, Jimmy Webb shared a narrative piece of music he was working on with his friend Art Garfunkel. The composition was a cantata Webb was crafting for a small children’s choir and orchestra at his local church in Tuxedo, New York. Garfunkel was immediately drawn to the project.

“It being a noncommercial endeavor, I was particularly interested in it,” said Garfunkel, “because I had become cynical about the fact that the record business will professionalize one’s musical attempts in a way that can hurt them.”

The Animals’ Christmas told the story of the birth of Jesus Christ from the perspective of the animals who were present. “I followed Jimmy’s rehearsals in Tuxedo and loved ‘The Animals’ Christmas,’” added Garfunkel. “I told him I wanted to get involved.”

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The Virgin Mary and Amy Grant

By ’84, Webb had written an entire piece around Garfunkel’s vocals. Garfunkel would also narrate the piece and serve as angel Gabriel. Then, Webb added a female part, the Virgin Mary. “We all performed it with orchestra, children’s choir, boy singer, girl singer, at St. John the Divine Cathedral that December in New York, and also at Festival Hall in London,” said Garfunkel. “We made a live recording of the shows, which later seemed to me too loose. So we planned to record it in the studio, the following Christmas.”

Along with the London Symphony Orchestra and the Wimbledon King’s College Choir, Garfunkel also recorded his vocals in Montserrat in the West Indies, before asking Amy Grant to add vocals to the album. He later went to Nashville for her recordings at Bullet Recording. Following her 1982 breakout album Age to Age, her first No. 1 Christian album, in 1985, Grant had already released a holiday offering, A Christmas Album.

Recorded between December 23, 1984, and December 12, 1985, The Animals’ Christmas was released in 1986 and features 12 tracks from “The Annunciation” through the closing “Wild Geese.”

“It’s a gothic cathedral of an album,” said Garfunkel. “It’s very ambitious. It was the type of project that would have been done by [the] papal commission long ago.”

Photo: Art Garfunkel (l), Dublin, 15/06/1982 (Independent Newspapers Ireland/NLI Collection). (Photo by Independent News and Media/Getty Images) and Amy Grant, ‘Christmas in Washingon,’ 1985″ (R.M. Lewis Jr./NBC/NBCU)