‘The Gilded Age’ Cast Is Releasing a Christmas Album With Audra McDonald, Christine Baranski and More

The Gilded Age Christmas album is bringing together the Broadway-heavy cast of HBO’s period drama for a 15-track holiday recording featuring Audra McDonald, Christine Baranski, Kelli O’Hara, Carrie Coon and more. Concord Theatricals Recordings announced the project September 25 and will release Voices of The Gilded Age: The Christmas Album on November 6.

Songwriter and producer Desmond Child conceived and produced the album, which combines familiar Christmas standards with two new songs written by Child. The first of those originals, “The World Needs Some Christmas,” performed by Ben Ahlers, was released alongside the album announcement.

The Gilded Age Christmas album brings its Broadway cast together

The official September 25 announcement identifies 15 members of The Gilded Age ensemble participating in the recording: Ahlers, Baranski, Laura Benanti, Denée Benton, Coon, Jordan Donica, Celia Keenan-Bolger, McDonald, Brian Stokes Mitchell, Donna Murphy, O’Hara, Taylor Richardson, Morgan Spector, Taylor Trensch and Adrienne Warren.

The lineup reflects an unusual feature of HBO’s drama. A substantial portion of its cast comes from Broadway and the New York theater world, including multiple Tony Award winners and nominees. The album turns that concentration of stage performers into a project separate from the television series itself.

Rather than performing as their Gilded Age characters, the cast members are contributing individual and ensemble recordings of holiday material.

Baranski performs “We Need a Little Christmas,” while Brian Stokes Mitchell takes on “It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year.” O’Hara sings “I’ll Be Home for Christmas,” and McDonald performs “I Wonder as I Wander.”

Audra McDonald, Donna Murphy and Kelli O’Hara sing Sondheim

One of the album’s more distinctive combinations brings McDonald, Murphy and O’Hara together for “I Remember,” Stephen Sondheim’s song from the 1966 television musical Evening Primrose.

Benton and Donica perform “O Holy Night,” while Warren records “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas.” Keenan-Bolger and Benanti are paired for “Wexford Carol,” and Richardson and Trensch perform “Let It Snow.”

Concord Theatricals Recordings’ official album listing confirms the complete 15-track sequence and November 6 release.

Coon and Spector take a different role on the record. Rather than receiving a conventional song track, the actors appear together across three parts of Clement Clarke Moore’s “‘Twas the Night Before Christmas,” which are placed at different points in the album.

Desmond Child wrote two new Christmas songs

Alongside the standards, Child contributed two original songs. Ahlers performs “The World Needs Some Christmas,” while Murphy sings the second new composition, “It’s Been Real.”

The Ahlers recording was released September 25 as the album’s first single, giving listeners an advance track more than a month before the full collection arrives.

Playbill independently reported the album announcement and its Broadway-heavy cast, including McDonald, Coon and Baranski.

Child has written and produced across several decades of pop and rock music, with songwriting credits that include major recordings for Bon Jovi, Aerosmith, Ricky Martin and others. For the Gilded Age project, he has built the album around the cast’s theater backgrounds rather than attempting to reproduce the score or dramatic setting of the HBO series.

The album arrives as The Gilded Age prepares to return

The November 6 release places the recording alongside renewed attention around the television series. That timing creates a natural crossover between the show’s audience and the cast members’ extensive theater careers, while the album itself remains a Concord Theatricals Recordings release rather than an episode soundtrack.

TV Insider also confirmed the November release, the first Ahlers single and the participation of the show’s Broadway veterans.

The physical edition is available for preorder through Concord, whose listing says copies are expected to ship during the week of November 6. The announcement also says the album is being offered digitally and on vinyl.

The project therefore gives The Gilded Age an unusual extension beyond television. Instead of a conventional soundtrack built around music heard in the series, the record uses the real-world musical backgrounds of its cast as the organizing idea.

With its first original song already released, The Gilded Age Christmas album will arrive in full November 6 with a lineup that connects one of television’s most theater-heavy ensembles directly to Broadway’s musical tradition.