Album Review: Donna Ulisse — All the Way to Bethlehem

From the moment this musical journey begins—with the soaring call-and-response of “I See the Light of the World”—to the closing joyous, Irish reel-inflected shouts of shepherds running through the streets of Bethlehem crying, “The Baby King is born/Heaven’s here on earth,” in “Morning in Bethlehem,” Ulisse’s rapturous and angelic voice soulfully accompanies us on the path that Zechariah, Elisabeth, John, Joseph, and Mary took along that donkey trail to Bethlehem long ago.

Her energetic and moving song cycle captures the emotions of every character in the biblical story found in Luke 1-3 of the events leading up to and surrounding Jesus’ birth. A Celtic-tinged ballad introduces Gabriel, the angel who promises both Elisabeth, through her husband Zechariah, and Mary that “You Will be Delivered,” and “Heaven will rest in Mary’s arms.” Ulisse’s touching duet with husband Rick Stanley on “All the Way to Bethlehem” captures both the doubt that Joseph feels about taking his pregnant wife on a journey to a faraway place and Mary’s deep faith as she reassures him that God “will carry me and my little baby/All the way, all the way to Bethlehem.” In the Appalachian folk song “He is Here,” carried along by dual fiddles, Ulisse expresses the wonder and awe with which the angel Gabriel announces Jesus’s birth to the shepherds, and in “I’m Gonna Shine,” the star shining in the East excitedly announces in a rollicking bluegrass romp that “I’m gonna shine/and shed the light that leads to Christ tonight.”

Surrounded by the witnesses of Byron House on upright bass, Andy Leftwich on violin and mandolin, Rob Ickes on dobro, John Mock on concertina, and Viktor Krauss on upright bass, Ulisse testifies to the true meaning of Christmas in these joyful hymns of adoration, praise, and worship.

Preview or purchase All the Way to Bethlehem