As promised last week, we're continuing with another set of sets of seasonal songs that have come forth this year.

THAT TIME OF THE YEAR
YORK THEATRE CAST RECORDING
(2-CD SET) JAY Records

Here's a fresh spin on the holidays that's worth a spin—and I don't just mean a dreidel, although that spinning toy takes its turn here to sing its own funny solo song. For those who seek other twists on aspects of the holidays besides the same old same old songs that are on hundreds and hundreds of albums, it's time for That Time of the Year, the revue of original songs that find some unchartered territory for subject matter. For example, there's one about a woman who has a Christmas surprise for her family and she's wary: she's decided to tell them she's a lesbian by bringing home her female lover for a "Country Christmas." Then there's the Jewish couple for whom Christmas is a special day: it's the anniversary of their wedding in the only open place they could book—a Chinese restaurant, "Wong Ho's China Garden." If this sounds familiar, it's because this revue of sincere, silly, sentimental, and sassy songs has made the rounds before. It was previously issued as an album and a DVD. It's a bit of a surprise to have another version, especially since there are only a couple of changes in material and some singers reappear. Kerri Jill Garbis is on all versions. All three of the women on the DVD are on this new JAY Records, a cast album as it employs the five singers from a past production at the York Theatre in New York City. In fact, the show is about to return to the York for five performances December 18-20 with three familiar folks from past incarnations. This album was recorded in February of 2007 with the 2006 cast; Annie Pasqua is the pianist/orchestrator with John Beal on bass and Chris Pagano on drums, all providing spirited and/or sensitive accompaniment as required. Balance/sound quality are excellent.

All the lyrics are by the team of Laurence Holzman and Felicia Needleman, with melodies by seven different composers. There are 32 tracks in all, including reprises and a very brief overture (less than a minute long). Hanukkah does not get short shrift by any means; many numbers are specifically related to the Jewish holiday's traditions and history.

Thanks to actress Kerri Jill Garbis and director Annette Jolles, the lusty lament of a vampy Mrs. Claus begging Santa to skip one Christmas Eve trip and "Stay Home Tonight" is more rib-tickling than ribaldry and vulgar over-obviousness. Some would opt for overplaying the hormone overdrive and shrew potential or telegraphing the double entendres and implications. Audiences are allowed to pick it all up on their own, which is more satisfying. Music-wise, it's one of several of Brad Ross's contributions with a real sense of musical comedy savvy and splash. Bridget Beirne does nicely by Mary's wonderment-filled "Welcome," satisfyingly combining a mother's joy at holding her just-born child with the happiness, awe and pride of this specific woman knowing who He is (this song, with music by Kyle Rosen, is the one not on the other cast CD).

With a more mundane subject, Erin Maguire shines on "Little Colored Lights," with wonderment wonderfully understated, reflecting on a subject you'd think is just a sign-of-the-season cliché or passing reference as it is in so many other songs. It makes its point that they represent and recall more than what they simply are. All three women are magnificent in the showstopping coup, playing fruitcakes singing of their woeful unpopularity in a 1950s pop-rock pastiche melody by Mark Wherry ("Nobody loves a fruitcake, boo-bi-di-boo-hoo"). Unlike the consensus about the dessert gift, the performance is absolutely delicious and most welcome.

The marvelous, warm-voiced singer-actor Jonathan Rayson is the human heart of the cast with tenderness informing even some moments that are primarily humorous and might be tossed off by others. As "Angelo Rosenbaum," the slightly shy fellow raised by parents of different religions he is endearingly adrift and befuddled with the problems this presents in finding a wife. In "Candles in the Window," he's movingly dignified as an elderly Jewish man recalling himself as a child longing for the pretty lights, etc., of Christmas decorations but learning the rich meaning of the menorah he will proudly light. He's also game for the comic numbers, such as the male-bonding songs ("Husbands' Blues"; "Rock 'n' Roll Hanukkah") with the other male cast member, Nick Verina.

Nick gets the broader, showier comic characters and bites into them terrifically: a strutting ladykiller rock star-type "Judah Maccabee" and the aforementioned singing dreidel. As an adolescent with a crush, wanting not video games so much but preferably getting just "Veronica" ("for Hanukkah"), his nimble performance is one of those surprisingly touching ones.

The title melody, with changing lyrics, is reprised briefly a few times as a connecting thread. Its likeable, lilting melody is by Nicholas Levin, who is also responsible for the accomplished musical setting for very powerful but tender "They All Come Home," about a family with its scattered grown children reunited just once a year. Another extra feature of this new cast album is having not one but two versions of another song with his fine music, "Miracles Can Happen," one with Christmas and Chanukah references, the other being Christmas-free.

The new recording sparkles with energy in the lively numbers and has some touching moments, and not just in the ones you can see a mile away like so many super-bright Christmas lights at the end of the road. And clearly it's not the end of the road for this show which seems like a candidate to be its own long-term holiday tradition.

VARIOUS THEATRE ARTISTS
NEW YORK CITY CHRISTMAS
A BENEFIT ALBUM FOR ASTEP
Ghostlight/Sh-k-Boom Records

Another opportunity for New York theatre performers to go Christmasy without at all turning into Dickensian choristers and certainly not choir boys is also a benefit for a worthy cause: New York City Christmas from Ghostlight/ Sh-k-Boom Records. This label has brought us some wonderful cast albums and solo recordings from musical theatre favorites, often having a more youthful, modern music sensibility, and this energetic CD is no exception. Benefitting the child-focused ASTEP charity connecting artists and needy children, the album and concerts of its music were put together by Lynne Shankel (often on piano) and she has brought along stars of some shows she orchestrated: two original Altar Boyz, Andy Karl and Tyler Maynard, and two members of the Cry-Baby cast, Tory Ross and Chester Gregory II. Also on hand are Constantine Maroulis, plucked from "American Idol" and shaking it up in Rock of Ages, Grease-r Lindsay Mendez, and solid belter Orfeh who's been in Legally Blonde, Footloose, Saturday Night Fever. It's not surprising that much of this has a very rock bent and is mostly a breezy, brash affair.

There's occasionally a calm in the storm and pop parade—Raul Esparza's classy, simple-but-powerful "O Holy Night" being the gem. Also coming up for air is The Little Mermaid herself, Sierra Boggess, for "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas." Sally Wilfert's "Wish for a Daddy" is from a new musical called Naughty/Nice (Gerald Stockstill/ Kenneth Jones) and is a winking comedy number with some tongue-in-cheeky stereotyping types from the point of view of a Greenwich Village child being raised by two gay men who feels over-attended to. One daddy would be enough for her, she states.

The 12 tracks are pretty packed with music, with a few being medleys. One oddity combines "Little Christmas Tree," a song recorded by Michael Jackson but carefully leaves out the lines mentioning its subject—the tree—with George Michael's "Last Christmas." Furthering the identity crisis, singer Tyler Maynard starts off sounding pretty serious but then seems to be shrugging off the song as if mocking it. All in fun? It seems the aim is more of a romp, rowdy and rockin', with occasional respites. The CD came out of a benefit concert and the circle will be completed as most of the singers reunite for another one at Joe's Pub on December 14.

ALLAN HARRIS
DEDICATED TO YOU:
ALLAN HARRIS SINGS A NAT KING COLE CHRISTMAS
Love Productions Records

Just released this week, there's something cool on the outside and warm on the inside in this contemporary jazz singer's salute to his musical hero. Allan Harris released a prior album, Nat King Cole: Long Live the King, to try the Cole repertoire on for size. Again, it's a good fit, the appealingly husky Harris voice with a smile in it and no fuss or attitude is easy to like right away. His timbre naturally has more than a few glimmers of the likeable legend without every tone being a clone.

If it were only for that most famous and ubiquitous voice singing "The Christmas Song" about those "chestnuts roasting on an open fire," Nat King Cole would have a big Christmas presence. Cole recorded plenty of Christmas songs, sacred and secular, which Harris represents, including a kid-friendly set. But don't head for the hills if you're afraid of an attack of the cutes. It's not that. Here we have the sad tale of a child who's poor, getting no gifts, but Allan just sings it sincerely; it's kind of a Christmas miracle perhaps that "The Little Boy That Santa Claus Forgot" avoids being a soap opera. The way happier "All I Want for Christmas (Is My Two Front Teeth)" and "Santa Claus Is Coming to Town" eschew goo, too.

Pull and pluck from the Nat archives Harris does, but please be advised that these very accessible, loose, hip jazz trio arrangements bear no resemblance to the orchestral/choral lush and commercial sound that was present aplenty on some Cole recordings (Christmas included) in the second half of his recording career.

This recording was done live in a radio station's performance space so you'll hear appreciative applause (sometimes at the point of a mid-song instrumental break), but there's no patter. Cozy and comfortable and swingin' lightly: that's the ambience with a super trio: pianist Eric Gunnison; bassist Mark Simon; drummer Paul Romaine. The instrumental breaks are tasty—nothing wild or abstract to worry the jazz-phobic. Intimate and mostly low-key, Dedicated to You freshens the brew. Compared to some Christmas retreads and recitals that cloy from pouring on the artificial sweetener, there's a kick of spice rather than syrup.

"O Holy Night" works wonderfully as a hushed expression of awe rather than big-voiced grandness: it's a real highlight. Also an accomplishment—in a very different way—is Frank Loesser's dialogue-style set piece, "Baby, It's Cold Outside." While others have made it coy or smirky to the extreme, this version sidesteps such excesses. With partner Rene Marie, a classy jazz singer herself, they're confident in more mellow style male-female attraction. And what about "The Christmas Song" itself? Like everything else here, it feels crisp and fresh. This is the good kind of lump of Cole to find in your stocking. Not earth-shaking or groundbreaking, but a very, very pleasurable and unaffected and rich, recommended ride.

Allan Harris performs his show based on this CD two nights before Christmas at The Metropolitan Room.

SYLVIA BENNETT
IT'S CHRISTMAS TIME WITH SYLVIA BENNETT
Out of Sight Music

You might say Sylvia Bennett's Christmas tree is strung with popcorn as it has an "easy listening" sometimes sticky sentimentality and commercial sound. Three original songs by producer Hal S. Batt are drenched in smiley-sweet winter/holiday images and attitudes like so many sugar-sprinkled Christmas cookies ("So let's have joy and fun/ For everyone/ At Christmastime each year" goes a typical lyric repeated and repeated in "Christmas Lights"). I am put off by the very even, insistent tempi and phrasing of lyrics on the beat, with other voices singing along – the opener has a bleating children's chorus wishing for "A Rainbow Christmas." So, right away, you know you're in that very warm and very fuzzy place. Things do get predictably plodding. But there are surprises. The biggest is the kind of Twilight Zone hijack from a Hallmark card vacuum sensibility for a winking revamp of "Santa Claus Is Coming to Town" with electrification and George Llizo's drum programming and his deep-voiced rap warning you kiddies to be good. I kid you not. It's a guilty pleasure, a silly hoot that's kinda fun.

I was prepared for pleasantness and sincerity and a kind of ladylike old-fashioned lovely sound from having enjoyed her better Songs from the Heart romantic collection. That's all here, with the very conservative treatments of Christmas standards like "Silver Bells" and "Winter Wonderland" that could use some adrenalin and in-the-moment phrasing. The 10th and last track, "The Christmas Song," is more successful, though it doesn't seem to be on the album as sold at some online places. Sylvia has more than grace and sweetness and light that doesn't get much exercise here. However, in the more muscular, gospel-inflected "Silent Night" she finally wails and shows some soul. But for those who might truly want the sweet touch and the songs in a very straight way, not jazzed up or reinvented, easy to sing along with, Sylvia's way may be right for them.

DAVE GALLAGHER
A CHRISTMAS ALBUM
(5-SONG E.P.)

Heartfelt and sincere, the high, very pretty and legato voice of Dave Gallagher is Christmas joy to behold. His five-track E.P. is striking and leaves one wanting more: small set list, big heart. A yearning quality is evident and he can also project serenity. Either way, his directness and humanity are in ample supply, making listening an emotional experience—truly reverent in the case of the sacred songs. First up, "The First Noel," immediately establishing the sense that we're in a special world of beauty, there's nothing fake or flip.

The sound quality leaves something to be desired but, oddly enough, the piano seeming somewhere far off and not crystal-clear but with the vocal right in your ear and so steadfast lends an ethereal quality that suits this. The simpatico and tender-touch pianist is Beckie Menzie, a mainstay of the Chicago cabaret scene.

John Bucchino's "Grateful" is unabashed in its expression of loving appreciation, but tempered with perspective of perhaps some battle scars and struggle experienced in the school of life. It works. Songwriter Scott Krippaehne, who is a performer/recording artist in his own right, seems a good fit: his "It Wouldn't Be Christmas" and "In the Calm" (co-written with Tony Wood) are sublime vehicles for Dave's romantic rhapsodizing and devoutness, respectively. If you're looking for someone who truly is convincing as a believer—in true love or the true meaning of Christmas, Dave is your man.

There's more to share before Christmas, putting aside the holiday hearing and getting back to some other cast albums and vocal CDs before the year melts away.

- Rob Lester

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