Paul Cardall, recognized as a contemporary jazz pianist, arrived on April 24, 1973. Born with a congenital heart defect that doctors said would end his life within days, he repeatedly surpassed those forecasts through repeated surgeries and childhood illnesses. Music offered refuge, prompting piano lessons at age eight that ended after six months and led to a ten-year hiatus from the keys. Tragedy intervened in high school when a close friend died in a car crash, moving Cardall to improvise a musical tribute that expanded into twelve additional compositions and a privately pressed album in 1995. At roughly the same time he took a holiday-season piano post at a local department store, where he sold copies of the recording directly to patrons; one reached Richard Paul Evans, author of the bestseller The Christmas Box, who asked Cardall to compose and record a musical treatment of the novel. The resulting album, also titled The Christmas Box, appeared in 1997. After signing with Narada, Cardall reissued it in 1999 together with The Looking Glass, both projects inspired by Evans’ novels. Daily Devotions and Miracles: A Journey of Hope and Healing followed in 2002. Stone Angel handled distribution for several later projects, among them Christmas Hymns, Vol. 1 in 2004 and Songs of Praise in 2007. Sacred Piano, released in 2009, began his affiliation with Shadow Mountain Records, the label behind the 2011 effort New Life that debuted at number one on the Billboard New Age Charts. Two albums arrived in 2014: Saving Tiny Hearts and New Life. 40 Hymns for 40 Days came out in 2015, and A New Creation appeared in 2016, marking Cardall’s first use of lyrics and orchestrations. In 2018 he curated and produced two Stone Angel compilations: Worth of Souls, which gathered Christian artists to address suicide and depression, and Sunday, a collection of tracks from various Stone Angel acts. He closed the year with the holiday set simply titled Christmas, followed the next year by Peaceful Piano.
