Gilded Age Cast to Release Christmas Album Ahead of Season 4

The cast of HBO's The Gilded Age is releasing a Christmas album.

Voices Of The Gilded Age: The Christmas Album arrives on digital, CD and vinyl on Friday, November 6, according to Deadline. The set mixes favourite holiday classics with new original songs. It comes from Concord Theatricals Recordings and features performers from the television series.

Songwriter and producer Desmond Child produced the album. That credit means guiding the sound and the recording sessions. He also wrote the record's two original tracks. They are titled "The World Needs Some Christmas" and "It's Been Real".

Listeners get a preview first. The lead single, meaning the first track released ahead of an album, is "The World Needs Some Christmas". It was written by Child and is performed by Ben Ahlers. Concord Shows has posted the track with an invitation to listen now.

The singing cast is large. Fifteen members of the company appear across the album.

They are Ben Ahlers, Christine Baranski, Laura Benanti, Denée Benton and Carrie Coon. They are joined by Jordan Donica, Celia Keenan-Bolger, Audra McDonald, Brian Stokes Mitchell and Donna Murphy. The line-up is completed by Kelli O'Hara, Taylor Richardson, Morgan Spector, Taylor Trensch and Adrienne Warren.

For anyone new to this kind of release, the pattern is simple. A single comes first to introduce the sound. The full album follows. Digital means streaming and download to a phone or computer. CD and vinyl are physical discs for home players, with gold vinyl a coloured pressing for collectors.

The music follows close behind the show. Season 4 of The Gilded Age premieres on Sunday, November 1 on HBO and HBO Max. That puts the album release five days after the season opener.

Fans can already secure a copy. The album is available for pre-order on digital, CD and gold vinyl, according to Concord Shows. Pre-order means reserving it now to receive it on release day.

For fans, this means two arrivals in one week. New episodes first. Then new songs from familiar voices. No live dates have been announced. The story for now is the record itself, and the reunion it puts on disc.