Laila Biali returns for night of originals, Christmas classics

LAILA BIALI: WINTERSONGS & HOLIDAY CLASSICS

Where: McPherson Playhouse, 3 Centennial Sq.

When: Friday, Dec. 15, 7:30 p.m.

Tickets: $53.25-$67 from the Royal McPherson box office (250-386-6121) or rmts.bc.ca

Laila Biali would move back to B.C., if she could swing it. But the CBC Radio host and Juno Award-winning jazz singer has commitments that require her to spend the majority of her time in Toronto, when she’s not on the road.

The host of Saturday Night Jazz, which airs weekly on CBC Radio 2, Biali will have to settle for regular visits to Vancouver Island — where she has been a fixture in recent years — until further notice. The 43 year-old jazz singer, who was born and raised in Vancouver, is performing Friday in Victoria at the McPherson Playhouse in her return to the market, the follow-up to her acclaimed appearance at the TD Victoria International Jazz Festival last year.

She will do so with guests the Victoria Children’s Choir for a show of original seasonal songs and holiday classics, which she debuted in 2022 at the 1,110-seat Koerner Hall in Toronto. Grammy-nominated saxophonist and flautist Jane Bunnett of Toronto joined her for the performance, and has re-teamed with Biali and bandmates Rebekah Wolkstein (violin), Dan Fortin (bass), and Ben Wittman (drums) for the in-progress Wintersongs & Holiday Classics tour.

“I admired Jane for decades, but we had never actually shared the stage [before Koerner Hall],” she said. “The audience loved her. She really brought the music to life.”

Biali has been touring Wintersongs coast-to-coast since Nov. 30, and will remain on the road through Dec. 20. A full Wintersongs album will arrive at this time next year, she said.

Biali will visit New York (where she lived for seven years) and Washington, D.C., (where her mother-in-law lives) before returning to Toronto for Christmas, where she has been establishing her own holiday traditions with her husband and son. Those invariably involve music, she said. Her mother used to play a “crackly, old” LP by the Vienna Boys Choir, which she has inherited and plays with joy each December.

“It gives me the warmest feeling, which is difficult to describe. That’s what we want to do with this show, through the original material I’m bringing and the familiar old chestnuts. We re-imagine them in a way that is really playful.”

Jazz has always been the perfect genre in which to release Christmas recordings, she said. Many standards that remain in constant rotation today are from jazz greats Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, Nat King Cole, and Dean Martin, among others.

“Those jazzy Christmas songs rule this time of year. Some of the songs really lend themselves well to a jazz sensibility, in terms of harmony and that swing feel. I wish I could crack the code on why that is, but they just pair so well.”

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