When Jane Lynch was a kid, her family was apt to break into song most any day, but they really let it rip on Christmas Eve.
The Emmy and Golden Globe Award-winning actress remembers gathering around a piano with friends and family to sing Christmas classics at her home in 1960s Dolton, Illinois. Her parents adored Christmas-friendly singers like Bing Crosby and Perry Como.
“That’s the stuff we listened to over and over,” Lynch said in a phone interview with The Daily Herald. “We’re big singers in our family. Music was part of our Christmas. We listened to the same albums every year.”
Though she’s mostly known for her comedic wit in roles such as Sue Sylvester on “Glee” and Gayle Sweeny in “Role Models.” Lynch, 58, is still an avid singer. And she loves Christmas.
Holiday spirit, singing and comedy will merge in Lynch’s show, “A Swingin’ Little Christmas,” coming Nov. 24 to the Edmonds Center for the Arts. You’ll hear toe-tapping holiday classics, originals reminiscent of the 1950s and ‘60s, and some jokes in between.
The show, on tour since 2016, also features Kate Flannery, Tim Davis and a jazz band led by musician, songwriter and producer Tony Guerrero.
Flannery played the socially inappropriate Meredith on “The Office” and Davis was the vocal arranger for “Glee.” Together with Lynch, they’re a classic-sounding trio with tight, three-part vocal harmonies, backed by lush orchestrations and up-tempo instrumentations.
“There are times where I’ll sing lead and they’ll do background and it sounds like it’s straight out of a recording booth of a late ’50s session,” Lynch said.
But Lynch and Flannery also put their comedic experience to good use. There will be laughs in between jazzy renditions of “Jingle Bells” and “We Three Kings,” Lynch said.
“It’s 90 minutes of beautiful music and fun, silly, little comedy,” Lynch said. “Kate is pretty spontaneous and inappropriate. Our buffoonery will ensue.”
You might not know Lynch can sing based on the comedic roles she’s done in the past. Ironically, she seldom sang on the musical TV series “Glee,” though she did show off her chops singing a Guatemalan love song to Steve Carrell in “40 Year Old Virgin.”
She also sang on Broadway as Miss Hannigan in “Annie” in 2013. Then, in 2015, she assembled Flannery, Davis and the Tony Guerrero Quintet and launched “See Jane Sing,” a cabaret show that is part singing, part comedy.
“Tony got the idea, ‘Why don’t we do a Christmas album?’ ” Lynch said.
Much like Bing Crosby and Perry Como did back in the day, the group gave traditional Christmas music their own fresh spin. The album reached No. 8 on the Billboard Adult Contemporary charts in 2016.
Davis rearranged classic carols and few more recent hits — such as Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas Is You” from 1994 — while Guerrero wrote five originals inspired by Crosby and Como’s era.
“It sounds like the Christmas music people grew up with,” Lynch said.
Evan Thompson: 425-339-3427, ethompson@heraldnet.com. Twitter: @ByEvanThompson.
If you go
What: Jane Lynch in “A Swingin’ Little Christmas”
When: 7:30 p.m. Nov. 24
Where: Edmonds Center for the Arts, 410 Fourth Ave. N., Edmonds
Tickets: Starts at $39 for general admission, $15 for youth/students
More: 425-275-9595 or www.edmondscenterforthearts.org
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