REVIEW: “It’s A Jazzy Christmas” at Proctors GE Theater, Solstice Night 2024

Saturday night, as “Melodies of Christmas” played on Proctors Main Stage, “It’s A Jazzy Christmas” celebrated the season in Proctors more intimate GE Theater.

Since pianist-leader David Gleason and Sal Prizio assembled this revue 15 winters ago around Vince Guaraldi’s happy Peanuts TV specials, and gift-wrapped familiar tunes in an antique radio-show format, it’s become one of our longest-running and most entertaining seasonal favorites. 

It’s A Jazz Christmas, from left: David Gleason, piano; Hannah Amigo, vocals; Brian Patneaude, saxophone; Mike Lawrence, bass; Chris Pasin, trumpet; Pete Sweeney (obscured by) Ben O’Shea, trombone

And very deservedly so; Saturday’s show brought virtuoso all-star quality to this ever-evolving evening. It was actually two evenings; “It’s a Jazzy Christmas also played Friday at Universal Preservation Hall in Saratoga Springs. But we digress. 

Saturday’s show wove new elements among the time-honored threads of Vince Guaraldi’s beloved Peanuts soundtracks, crafting a colorful quilt of music and humor that warmed everyone in the sold out venue. The crowd sang along when invited, though softly, as if leaving the melodies to the pros.

Gleason was clearly the leader of this easy-flowing 100-minute Solstice-night revue, even before he donned a Yellow Cab cap to set up a playful “Baby It’s Cold Outside” duet of singers Hannah Amigo and Mike McCord. (McCord also doubled as the radio announcer.) The three framed “Baby” as a tentatively romantic curbside pick-up to humorous effect, but also featured McCord acknowledging “your body, your choice” in his courtship rap.

He later cited “political nonsense” in the season’s call for harmony and unity; but present-day angst had no chance to bring things down amid the evening’s powerful evocation of both.

Art D’Echo Trio, from left: David Gleason, piano; Mike Lawrence, bass; Pete Sweeney, drums

The start felt cozy: a radio-style chat from McCord then “Christmas Is Coming” and “Skating” – both from Guaraldi’s “Peanuts” songbook and both featuring the Art D’Echo Trio, Gleason’s nucleus for the revue with longtime bandmates Mike Lawrence, bass; and Pete Sweeney, drums.

Bandmates came and went, first singer Hannah Amigo in “Christmas Time Is Here,” then the horns, pumping up “Jingle Bells” as a jaunty mambo after playful false starts. Brian Patneaude played tenor sax mostly, but bass clarinet some; alongside trumpeter Chris Pasin and trombonist (and bass-trombonist) Ben O’Shea. Area jazz fans have heard them all, many times, but maybe never as fine and fun as Saturday, especially Gleason, an elegant rocket on the keys.

While song intros sometimes reached for laughs, and got them, the playing was always confidently smooth; just as Art D’Echo Trio has played together for decades and sometimes backed stars from out of town, Gleason and the horns are longtime mainstays of Keith Pray’s Big Soul Ensemble.

They aimed for comfort, or for awe in their aggressive, modernist take on “We Three Kings” (a Chris Pasin arrangement and feature), and sometimes for the funny bone with “The Grinch” featuring low-register playing.

The can’t-miss tunes dependably hit their mark with familiar charm, but also some variations: Amigo’s torchy “Santa Baby” seduced while her duet with Gleason in “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” felt like a warm quilt pulled up over the knees.

Meanwhile, more adventurous fans delighted in surprises, new this year. Anybody who’s heard these shopping-mall-battered, over-familiar favorites had to savor the cascading-note creativity of “We Three Kings,” the hilariously localized “12 Days of Christmas” duet by Gleason and McCord citing “four-mer governors,” “787,” “Alive at Five” and, wrapping every incremental verse, “a Market 32 gift card.”

David Gleason and Mike McCord

Next in this mid-set highlight reel came “Oh, Holy Night” as a soul-jazz reverie, Amigo’s voice soaring high; and a trio version of “O, Tannenbaum.” The trio also sparkled in “Dreidel, Dreidel, Dreidel” as Gleason taffy-pulled the tempo and Lawrence and Sweeney kept right up. “The Man with the Bag” (yeah, you got it) swung 1950s style, while “Dig that Crazy Santa Claus” bopped with beatnik flair.

The horn players got out to play: especially Patneaude in his zippy romp through the Coltrane-esque“Sleigh Ride,” Pasin in his arraignment of “We Three Kings” and an elegant muted solo in “Winter Wonderland” and O’Shea in the jaunty cha-cha “Feliz Navidad.” And they got to close the show by second-line parading off-stage at the end.

This was NOT your choir director’s holiday show – not that there’s anything wrong with THAT – but it was something special: smart, sharp, silly and all kinds of sweet.

Setlist

Christmas Is Coming

Skating

Christmastime Is Here

Jingle Bells Mambo

The Grinch Theme

Winter Wonderland > Let it Snow

Santa Baby

Sleigh Ride

Feliz Navidad

We Three Kings

Twelve Days of Christmas

O Holy Night

O Tannenbaum

Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas 

Man With The Bag

Baby, It’s Cold Outside

Dreidel, Dreidel, Dreidel

Hark The Herald Angels Sing

Dig That Crazy Santa Claus

Linus and Lucy

Santa Claus is Coming to Town

Mike Lawrence

Pete Sweeney

Hannah Amigo

Brian Patneaude

Chris Pasin, right, foreground; Mike Lawrence, left, background

Ben O’Shea

Mike McCord

David Gleason

Just as solstice celebrations pre-date Christmas*, the Eighth Step’s venerable Sing Solstice! predates most other area seasonal celebrations. Since 1996, the two duos Kim & Reggie Harris and Magpie (Terry Leonino and Greg Artzner) have celebrated Sing Solstice! at the Eighth Step, originally in its first home in Albany’s First Presbyterian Church. On Sunday, they sing together in the Eighth Step at Proctors GE Theater (432 State St., Schenectady).

Kim and Reggie Harris, left, with Magpie; Greg Artzner and Terry Leonino. Photo supplied

All have been Eighth Step favorites for decades; Leonino playing harmonica, guitar and dulcimer; Reggie Harris and Artzner playing guitar and Kim Harris playing percussion. All four sing, as duos, or all together.

Sing Solstice! celebrates renewal and kinship in the turning of the seasons. Over the centuries winter solstice celebrations came to include Yule, Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa & more around the world. All celebrate the lengthening of days and sunlight’s return with the promise of spring, and most of them have produced celebratory songs.

Kim & Reggie Harris sing in the musical language of blues, Gospel and folk traditions, first performing in Philadelphia churches and schools where they sang to educate and to inspire. They’ve recorded many albums, including several with Magpie.

Inspired by the same traditions and activist spirit, Magpie makes music with meaning as well as melody, recording a dozen-plus albums that shine clear, true light on our political, social and cultural history.

As they have for years, the Pokingbrook Morris Dancers also perform Sunday, opening Sing Solstice! in costumes and steps of England’s Cotswold region. 

Show time is 7:30 p.m., doors 7. $26 advance, $28 at the door; $45 gold circle (two front rows, center). www.8thstep.org 518-346-6204. Free parking in the Broadway garage.

• Solstice celebrations may have begun around a neolithic monument built about 3,200 BC in Newgrange, Ireland. It’s aligned with the winter solstice sunrise when rising sun light illuminates carvings on an inside wall for 17 minutes. Stonehenge, identically aligned, was built about 200 years later. 

• The Catholic Church in Rome began celebrating Christmas on Dec. 25 in 336 AD, the reign of Emperor Constantine.

They’ve got it down! The 15th edition of “It’s a Jazz Christmas” brings top area jazz talents to Universal Preservation Hall Friday, Dec. 20 and Proctors GE Theater Saturday, Dec, 21.

This well-loved holiday musical favorite features the same cast of musicians and others as last year, including horns, a singer and a genial host. These join the original trio version of the jazzy holiday celebration Gleason first cooked up around pianist-composer Vince Guaraldi’s music for Peanuts holiday specials.

David Gleason. All photos supplied.

Gleason and then-chief of the Massry Center at the College of St. Rose Sal Prizio presented the first area Guaraldi-based holiday show, “…wrapped in the guise of a live old time radio show,” as Gleason has explained, a format that has endured.

Over time, as he explained, Gleason added musical and spoken elements to his long-running Art D’Echo trio of bassist Mike Lawrence and drummer Pete Sweeney. Trumpeter Chris Pasin, reeds player Brian Patneaude and trombonist Ben O’Shea joined the line-up, plus singer Hannah Amigo and Mike McCord as the show’s radio host, expanding on Prizio’s original script.

Art D’Echo Trio, from left, Mike Lawrence, bass; David Gleason, keyboards; and Pete Sweeney, drums

“Like most young musicians, I poked around at Christmas music every December,” Gleason has explained. He mastered “Jingle Bells” on his own before lessons brought additional holiday classics including “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” – now a vocal/piano duet in “It’s a Jazzy Christmas” – into his repertoire. 

Gleason suggested when we spoke about last year’s edition of this annual favorite, that this is more than just “jazzy,” like the adjective. It’s essential. He said, “It’s actual jazz…with plenty of room to stretch out.” He said, “We have full choruses of improvised solos, and each of the horn players has a feature.” Those features draw inspiration from jazz greats. They play a John Coltrane-style version of “We Three Kings,” for example, that trumpeter Chris Pasin arranged. Pasin is also a composer and arranger of note, a respected bandleader and valued sideman in his own right. So are all these players; they perform in and/or lead various ensembles.

The “It’s a Jazzy Christmas” horns, from left, Brian Patneaude, saxophone and bass clarinet; Chris Pasin, trumpet; and Ben O’Shea, trombone

Gleason began the project by adapting Guaraldi’s tunes to the Art D’Echo trio’s style, but soon arranged “Hark The Herald Angels Sing” into Oscar Peterson’s prolific attack. Also early on, he made a rhapsody of “Dreidel, Dreidel, Dreidel;” so, in this way, familiar tunes evolve. Now, “Jingle Bells” is a mambo and “The Grinch” theme a low rumble. 

“Each year we add something new,” said Gleason last year. 

This year, he promises, “Lots of Vince Guaraldi ‘Peanuts’ holiday tunes and my arrangements of classic holiday tunes.” He said, “There’ll be a few new things added since last year, but a lot of it is the same.” Gleason noted, “We are trying to do little things to change the show each year, but it’s essentially close to the same each year. The audience seems to like a little bit of both!”

In fact, the audience likes it in droves: Tickets are selling briskly for both shows. 

The Proctors Collaborative presents “It’s a Jazz Christmas” Friday at Universal Preservation Hall (25 Washington St., Saratoga Springs) and Saturday at Proctors GE Theater (432 State St., Schenectady). Show time for both: 7:30 p.m. Tickets: $35 adults, $15 for children 17 and under. Box office: 518-346-6204.

PREVIEW – Tatiana Eva-Marie Sings 30s-40s French Gypsy Jazz at Caffe Lena Thursday

“Gypsy jazz” singer Tatiana Eva Marie arrives at Caffe Lena (47 Phila St., Saratoga Springs) Thursday as an import with impeccable pedigree, a supple voice, warm onstage charm and a crackerjack band. 

Daughter of a Swiss-French composer father and Romanian violinist mother, she was born in Switzerland and raised there and in France. She came to New York and soon formed her Avalon Jazz Band, fine-tuning it to the agile, light-footed zip of classic Gypsy Jazz ala its inventors guitarist Django Reinhardt and violinist Stephane Grapelli. 

Her violinist Gabe Terracciano also plays with the Turtle Island String Quartet including a summer show at SPAC’s recent jazz festival with Terence Blanchard’s expanded young band. Wallace Stelzer plays bass and Max O’Rourke plays guitar, sharing solo time with Terracciano.

Always ambitious, Eva Marie wrote the libretto for Swiss composer Gerard Massini’s opera “Eden Park,” and her latest album (of 10 since 2016) “Djangology” features lyrics she wrote for Reinhardt’s songs. Inspired by the Renaissance artist tradition, she earned a Master’s in medieval literature at the Sorbonne, and she designed the artwork for “Djangology.” She starred in Gerome Barry’s first feature film “Swing Rendezvous” based on her life in New York. And she is already performing live the songs for her next album – of songs from Disney films, sung in French. 

Highly telegenic, like the young Maria Muldaur, Eva-Marie’s YouTube videos have generated 80 million views.

Thursday marks her first Caffe Lena performance. Elsewhere, she’s earned rapturous reviews.

The New York Times dubbed her “The gypsy-jazz warbler.”

Downbeat noted, “Tatiana Eva-Marie and her Avalon Jazz Band explored the connection between Paris and New Orleans,” where the Gambit Weekly “Best of New Orleans” praised her this way: “The soft tones and playful energy vocalist Tatiana Eva-Marie employs while tackling the hot jazz styles of the 1930s and 1940s has earned her plenty of accolades both nationally and in her adopted hometown of New York City, where the Avalon Jazz Band is becoming a staple of a thriving Gypsy jazz scene.”

And New York’s Village Voice reported she and her Avalon Jazz Band  “…continue in the beloved steps of Django Reinhardt and Stephane Grappelli, but with a contemporary and delightful American twist.”

Their Caffe Lena debut Thursday is presented as part of the Jazz at Caffe Lena collection and The Bright Series, thanks to Kevin and Claudia Bright.

7 p.m. Tickets $34.71, members $30.37, students and children $17.90; plus modest fees. 518-583-0022 www.caffelena.org