ADRIAN — An audience-favorite performer from the Adrian Symphony Orchestra’s 2022-23 season returns to the ASO stage for the orchestra’s upcoming “Swing Into Christmas” pops concert.
Sarah D’Angelo, who sang and played clarinet with guest conductor Paul Keller and the ASO Swing Band in June 2023, is the featured soloist for this concert of Christmas music with a swing vibe. The performance is at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, Dec. 14, at Adrian College’s Dawson Auditorium.
Tickets are $39/$33/$25, with discounted rates of $37/$31/$25 for senior citizens and $20/$17/$13 for students. They may be ordered online at adriansymphony.org; by phone at 517-264-3121; at the ASO office in Mahan Hall, Adrian College, from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday; or at the door beginning two hours before the concert.
When D’Angelo performed at that 2023 concert, “people just went crazy for her,” ASO music director Bruce Anthony Kiesling said. “We knew we had to get her back.”
A native of western New York state who’s now based in Detroit, D’Angelo earned her bachelor’s degree in clarinet performance and music education from West Virginia University. She then went to the University of Michigan to earn a graduate degree in clarinet performance, but quickly found herself interested in more than simply classical music.
She immersed herself in jazz, funk, gospel, blues and pop music, and today performs both as a soloist and with other musicians around Michigan and across the United States.
Many of her performances are with the Ann Arbor-based Paul Keller Orchestra and the Paul Keller Ensemble, and she has recorded several albums with Keller including a 2020 Christmas release, “Even More Christmas Songs for Jazz Lovers.” She also leads her own trio and quintet and released her first solo album, “Medicine Man,” in 2019.
In addition to her extensive work with Keller, she has also performed with jazz musicians Randy Napoleon, Jim Martinez, Will Matthews, Cleave Guyton Jr., Cécile McLorin Salvant, John Pizzarelli, Anat Cohen, Paquito D’Rivera, and many more. She counts Ella Fitzgerald, Benny Goodman, and Keith Jarrett as her greatest jazz influences.
For this concert, the ASO with Kiesling conducting takes on a big band-with-strings look and sound. D’Angelo will sing six pieces including the Frank Sinatra version of “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas,” the version of “Santa Claus is Coming to Town” popularized by Michael Bublé, “White Christmas” as made famous by Bing Crosby, and the Benny Goodman-Peggy Lee rendition of “Winter Weather.”
The concert program also includes violinist Lindsey Stirling’s arrangements of two traditional Christmas carols, “Angels We Have Heard on High” and “What Child is This?” as well as “Where Are You Christmas?” and a swing version of “Happy Holidays” performed by the Adrian High School Balladiers directed by Steve Antalek.
While the Balladiers have sung at ASO concerts before, those have been vocal-only numbers. This is the first time the group has performed a piece actually with the orchestra.
As has been the case with previous holiday concerts, this one will be somewhat shorter than most ASO performances and done without an intermission.
“Everyone’s so busy this time of year,” Kiesling said. “But this will be a lovely break from the running around and shopping and parties and wrapping gifts.” And it would be a nice opportunity, he said, for regular Adrian Symphony patrons to introduce friends to the orchestra who haven’t experienced an ASO concert themselves.
Kiesling thinks audience members will really enjoy having D’Angelo as this year’s holiday-concert soloist. At her 2023 performance in Adrian “she brought the house down,” he said.
“Every once in a while, you get a really great soloist,” whether it’s on the classical side or, in D’Angelo’s case, on the pops side. “She was so popular and so well-received here. We really wanted to make [this concert] a showcase for her, in a way we haven’t done before.”
