Natalie Merchant’s new album begins with Mother Goose, but its ambitions reach well beyond the nursery.
Out August 21 on Nonesuch Records, Cabinet of Wonder brings together Merchant, musicians from the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the Chicago Children’s Theatre, and a large cast of collaborators to reimagine centuries-old nursery rhymes for a new generation. The digital release is one element of a sweeping early-childhood arts initiative encompassing music, theater, dance, video, classroom lessons, and live performance. (Merchant will be performing at the Rough Notes Festival in Kinderhook on Saturday, August 29.)
Merchant, a Hudson Valley resident since 1990, traces the project’s origins to around 2017, when she began volunteering with the Head Start program administered by the Commission on Economic Opportunity in Troy. What started as an offer to sing with preschoolers for a few hours each week grew into a three-year artist residency. Merchant eventually worked three days a week, bringing musicians into classrooms and developing lessons for roughly 300 children around traditional songs, games, and rhymes.
Mother Goose became the organizing principle. The compact verses introduced children to rhyme, rhythm, vocabulary, history, and the surreal possibilities of language. “Rub-a-Dub-Dub” could open a conversation about oceans, rivers, and other bodies of water; “Jack Be Nimble” prompted questions about the meaning of “nimble” and why Jack wasn’t afraid of the candle.
The school years culminated in an original musical called “Happy Birthday, Mother Goose!,” featuring more than 100 Head Start children. Merchant designed and helped sew scores of costumes for the productions, transforming preschoolers into kings, queens, birds, spiders, pumpkin eaters, and other inhabitants of the Mother Goose universe.
That classroom experiment eventually became Cabinet of Wonder, developed over three years with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Chicago Children’s Theatre. Merchant describes the project as the culmination of her four decades of involvement in children’s arts and education—and potentially her legacy.
The Nonesuch release contains 17 songs and accompanying videos, although its track list runs to 18 entries with the inclusion of the narrated “Who Is Mother Goose?” Familiar characters abound: Humpty Dumpty, Little Miss Muffet, Old King Cole, Jack Sprat, the Queen of Hearts, and the crooked man who walked a crooked mile. Three pieces are Merchant originals.
Arranger Megan Gould gives each rhyme a distinct musical setting, offering young listeners a tour through genres and instruments. “Little Nut Tree” receives an elegant chamber arrangement; “Little Miss Muffet” comes with Dixieland brass; “Humpty Dumpty” swings to a Calypso rhythm; and “Hickory Dickory Dock” becomes a Celtic romp. Merchant sings alongside members of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, guest musicians, and a children’s chorus. The album was recorded at Chicago’s Electrical Audio in 2024 with Grammy-winning engineer Ryan Freeland.
The accompanying videos feature Merchant in dual roles as Mother Goose and a librarian-teacher called Miss Natalie. Musicians perform alongside 24 children recruited through Chicago Children’s Theatre’s education program, with shadow puppetry supplied by the inventive Chicago theater collective Manual Cinema.
Merchant’s hand is visible throughout the undertaking. In addition to composing, singing, narrating, and acting, she designed and stitched costumes, wrote teaching guides, helped edit the videos, and oversaw the creative direction of the project’s website. The site makes the songs, videos, nursery rhymes, photographs, sheet music, lesson plans, and other educational resources available free to teachers and families.
That accessibility is central to the project. Merchant has spoken repeatedly about the scarcity of arts programming for preschool children, particularly during the years when language, imagination, and emotional development are taking shape. Cabinet of Wonder uses Mother Goose as a point of entry into poetry, movement, music, science, history, and collective play.
The initiative has already been tested in a dozen Chicago public schools. Its first year culminated in May with concerts at Symphony Center for nearly 3,000 children, many of whom arrived already knowing the words and music. During the 2026–27 school year, Merchant will work with the National Head Start Association on teacher training, classroom visits, educational conferences, and a nationwide expansion.
For longtime listeners, Cabinet of Wonder recalls Merchant’s 2010 album Leave Your Sleep, which set children’s poetry to an array of musical traditions. This new project goes further into the classroom, turning an album into a shared body of songs, images, performances, and lessons. Merchant has fashioned those old rhymes into something built to travel—from Troy preschoolers to a Chicago orchestra and, beginning tomorrow, to children and teachers everywhere.
