What Child Of Kings

Multi-award winning vocalist, songwriter, and producer Natalie Nicole Gilbert shows her musical versatility and emotional breadth in her new nostalgic album, Warm Winter (Orchard). Having released over a dozen albums of original music ranging from EDM to jazz to alt pop rock, Gilbert delves into putting her own spin on an eclectic mix of 10 iconic songs written by some of the most notable songwriters of our time, including David Foster, Joni Mitchell and Andrew Lloyd Webber. To create the album, Gilbert collaborated with a multi-faceted team of music heavyweights, including composer and violinist Andrew Joslyn, (Leslie Odom Jr., Macklemore and Lewis, Suzanne Vega), songwriter, composer, orchestrator, film scorer and multi-instrumentalist Dana Bisignano (Oprah, VH1, and Curb Your Enthusiasm), and multiple award-winning TV and film composer Jonathan Still (Dancing With The Stars, Shameless, Inside the NFL). Warm Winter now on all digital music platforms.

Gilbert’s Warm Winter album consists of her unique re-imaginings of 10 songs from a smorgasbord of genres. The songs range from Andrew Lloyd Webber’s rendition of a centuries old Latin hymn “Pie Jesu”, to a contemporary mashup of “What Child Is This” over the melody of “We Three Kings” in “What Child of Kings”; to Gilbert’s ambitious covers of Joni Mitchell’s 1971 Christmas folk song “River”, Fleetwood Mac’s 1974 “Landslide”, David Foster’s 1990 “Grown Up Christmas List” and Harry Styles’s 2019 melancholy “Falling”. “Walking in the Air”, is from the children’s TV animated film, The Snowman, and “Wrapped Up in a Dream Called You” brings lush traditional jazz to the album.

Guest artists on the album include vocalist Lisa Ramey (NBC’s The Voice) and Grammy Award winning vocalist/songwriter/producer Jarrett Johnson (Take 6, Michael Bubl, Ariana Grande, Childish Gambino) on “That Will Be Christmas”. Strings were provided by Andrew Joslyn who played violin and viola on 7 of the 10 tracks, along with Eli Weinberger (Manahem Pressler, Macklemore and Lewis) on cello. Jonathan Still provided the piano and arrangement of “What Child Of Kings”, and Dana Bisignano provided piano on four of the tracks. Warren Pettey adds a soulful jazz piano in “Falling”, “Grown Up Christmas List” and “Landslide”. “Wrapped Up in a Dream Called You” features Steve Rice (who also co-wrote the song) on piano and Jay Thomas on the tenor sax solo, joined by Devan Stovall on drums and Cary Black on bass.

The album was co-produced by Gilbert and Latin Grammy-nominated producer, recording engineer, DJ and remixer Robert Eibach. He also provided the beats and instrumentation on “That Will Be Christmas”.

LA-based Natalie Nicole Gilbert comes from a musical family heritage with a pianist mother who played with Liberace, a vocalist sister into love songs from every era, a brother in a rock band, and a father whose tech engineer mind led him to work for Lockheed Martin. Gilbert’s career has included collaborations with a number of film composers and musicians of a wide array of genres ranging from EDM to classic jazz to alt pop rock. Today, Gilbert is a voting member of the Recording Academy with 12 solo albums and an additional seventeen singles to her credit. In addition to her music, she has more than 10 years in broadcast radio as a radio host and voiceover talent, and has done national commercials for McDonalds, Cadillac, Quiznos, and other well-known brands. She built her home recording studio in 2005 when it was still a relatively new practice, and continues to produce and co-produce her own music. Gilbert is also a session vocalist for the Dublin Studio Hub, and film and TV composer with Music + Pictures, whose credits include Law and Order, The Office, and many others worldwide. She brings her extensive knowledge of what is radio-ready and what is easiest to license for film & TV to her own acoustic and electric songs.

Warm Winter Track list:
1. Falling (Extended Cut)
2. Wrapped Up in a Dream Called You
3. Vincent (Starry Starry Night)
4. Grown Up Christmas List
5. That Will Be Christmas
6. What Child Of Kings
7. River
8. Walking in the Air (from The Snowman)
9. Pie Jesu
10. Landslide

A mashup of What Child is This (lyrics) over We Three Kings (melody). Arrangement by Jonathan Still.