INTERVIEW: Lisa Howard will celebrate ‘Most Wonderful Time of the Year’ at Feinstein’s / 54 Below
Photo: Lisa Howard has a new Christmas album called The Most Wonderful Time of the Year. Photo courtesy of the artist / Provided by Richard Hillman PR with permission.
Famous Broadway performer Lisa Howard, known for her work in It Shoulda Been You and Escape to Margaritaville, among other shows, is getting into the Christmas spirit and spreading good cheer. She recently released her first Christmas album, called The Most Wonderful Time of the Year, and she plans to bring the holiday tunes to a special concert Sunday, Dec. 12 at Feinstein’s / 54 Below in Midtown Manhattan. That show has the most appropriate of titles: What Christmas Means to Me.
“I have worked with my producers-collaborators Michael Shaieb and Brett Lord at Fat Lab Music,” Howard said in a recent phone interview. “I’ve worked with them for years and years. Way back, gosh it must have been 2004, we made a mini little Christmas album just as a gift for my parents. It was never released or anything, and over the years, after having done other projects, we always joked, ‘Someday we have to do a real Christmas album.’ During the pandemic when not much was going on, Mike said to me, ‘We should really do that Christmas album now.’ I said, ‘Yes, it’s the perfect time.’ We’re all itching to produce and do something creative. It was the perfect time, so we got to work.”
What resulted from their efforts is an eclectic mix of Christmas songs in Howard’s unique singing style. There are classics like “Sleigh Ride” and “All I Want for Christmas Is You,” plus rare tunes like “Santa Tell Me” and “Christmas Wrapping.”
“How do you choose from the thousands of songs that there are, so I decided to put together this show concept first because I knew if you had an album you’d eventually do it in concert,” she said. “I thought this could be something that we can do in the future. Let me write the show first. I came up with the idea and narrowed down the song choices based on those dramatic concepts, and then it helped so much in narrowing it down. OK, I’m listening to a bunch of songs. These songs fall into these categories. Let’s use them and fill them in for this show idea, and so that’s how we were able to come up with the show, come up with the song list, and why it’s so eclectic because they really feel like a dramatic purpose.”
There is also an original composition in the mix as well: “The House Where I Grew up at Christmas,” penned by Shaieb. Howard said that her producer wrote the song as a one-off, much like he has with other tunes over the years. She heard the song and joked with him that one day she would record the composition.
“When we came up with the idea of actually making a Christmas album, I said, ‘Well, of course, ‘House Where I Grew Up’ is going to be on the album,’ and that’s just a really good story of his family growing up,” Howard said. “He had a sister and brothers, and they’d go get the Christmas tree. It’s about his family.”
Howard credited Shaieb with the unique arrangements on the album, which also includes the songs “Last Christmas” and “We Need a Little Christmas.” In particular, she points her fans to check out “Sleigh Ride,” which is presented in a most unusual and transfixing manner.
“There are classic songs that some of them I knew I wanted to sing, and I sing them pretty straightforward,” she said. “Others I love, so to make it my own, I sometimes combined them with other songs in that way. Between style and maybe combining well-known songs, we tried to come up with something unique and different. Why should someone listen to this version of it? Because it has a little twist to it.”
The Feinstein’s / 54 Below show will feature most of the album’s selections, plus some theater songs thrown in for good measure. Howard has a lot of options to choose from. She was in the original Broadway casts of The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee and 9 to 5: The Musical, plus the acclaimed Lincoln Center revival of South Pacific.
“I’ve done a show there before, and I’ve sung one or two numbers at many different concerts there,” Howard said of the venue. “I love the space. They’re great to work with, and it’s a beautiful room. I definitely feel comfortable there. I think they do great shows. It’s good food. It’s intimate enough. It’s an all-around good space to work in.”
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
Lisa Howard’s new album is called The Most Wonderful Time of the Year, and she will present her concert, What Christmas Means to Me, Sunday, Dec. 12 at Feinstein’s / 54 Below in Midtown Manhattan. Click here for more information and tickets.
